iiininii'i  I  ,i,;;n 


i!l!jiliiiiflliiiiiiiititliiiitiiiiiin!iii!i!iifniiiiiin;n!i 


ri'Ai 


ill;!!; 


THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 


'.  •    •  • ' 


^Cx^^eAtdLAc^    +4  ,  cU,   M.AAA 


THE 

REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

A    SOLDIER'S  THOUGHTS  ON 
WAR  AND  RECONSTRUCTION 


BY 
HENRY    DE   MAN,  C.  deG.,M.C. 

FIRST    LIEUTENANT,     BELGIAN    ARMY 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1919 


COPTRIGHT,  1919,  BT 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


Published.  August,  1919 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAOB 

I.     Before  the  War 1 

II.  The  Collapse  of  the  "Internationale"  .       .  23 

III.     Nineteen-Fourteen 46 

IV.     The  Spell  of  Dogmatism 78 

V.     German  Patriotism 98 

VI.      German  Militarism 117 

VII.     Why  Men  Fought 153 

VIII.     Heroism        .      . 181 

IX.     In  the  Land  of  Des-potism 213 

X.     In  the  Land  of  Freedom 249 

XI.     The  New  Socialism 271 


FOREWORD 

....  Know'st  thou  not  there  is  but  one  theme  for  ever-en- 
during bards? 

And  that  is  the  theme  of  War,  the  fortune  of  battles, 

The  making  of  perfect  soldiers. 

Be  it  80,  then  I  answer'd,  n 

I  too  haughty  Shade  also  sing  v/ar,  and  a  longer  and  greater 
one  than  any, 

Waged  in  my  book  with  varying  fortune,  with  flight,  advance  and 
retreat,  victory  deferr'd  and  wavering, 

(Yet  methinks  certain,  or  as  good  as  certain,  at  the  last),  the 
field  the  world, 

For  life  and  death,  for  the  Body  and  the  eternal  Soul, 

Lo,  I  too  am  come,  chanting  the  chant  of  battles, 

I  above  all  promote  brave  soldiers. 

Walt  Whitman,  As  I  pondered  in  silence. 

As  books  go,  perhaps  I  might  have  written  a 
book  on  my  war  experiences. 

With  a  record  of  three  years*  service  at  the 
battle  front,  in  capacities  as  various  as  those  of 
a  private  in  the  infantry,  a  liaison  officer,  an 
artillery  observer,  and  a  trench  mortar  officer; 
with  some  experience  of  the  Belgian,  British, 
Russian  and  Roumanian  fronts;  four  months 
on  a  diplomatic  mission  to  the  Russian  revolu- 
tionary government,  and  six  months  on  a  govern- 
ment mission  to  the  United  States,  possibly  my 
war  diary  might  not  have  proved  much  more 

vii 


viii  FOREWORD 

uninteresting  than  most  similar  publications  on 
the  market. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  believe  it  would  have 
been  less  dull  to  the  reading  pubhc  at  large  than 
this  book  is  going  to  be.  For  I  intend  to  make 
this  a  record  of  my  psychological  war  experi- 
ences, without  any  more  reference  to  actual  oc- 
currences than  is  necessary  for  the  understand- 
ing of  their  reaction  on  my  mind. 

I  realise  perfectly  well  that  a  book  of  this  type 
is  going  to  appeal  to  a  much  smaller  section  of 
the  pubhc  than  would  a  miscellany  of  trench 
stories,  or  diplomatic  revelations  in  the  style  of 
war  correspondents.  Yet,  rather  than  swell  the 
number  of  books  of  this  type,  I  think  it  more 
worth  while  to  contribute  some  fragmentary  ma- 
terial for  those  who  are  seeking  an  answer  to  the 
questions:  How  has  the  war  affected  the  mind 
of  those  who  have  done  the  fighting?  Have  they 
formed  any  new  ideals?  And  what  part  are  these 
ideals  going  to  play  in  the  reconstruction  of 
Europe? 

This  book  is  intended  to  show  the  remaking 
of  a  mind  during  the  remaking  of  the  world.  It 
will  be  a  succession,  in  broad  chronological  order, 
of  the  reactions  of  the  war,  in  its  changing  mih- 
tary  and  pohtical  aspects,  on  the  mind  of  a  young 
European  who  has  been  "all  through  it." 

It  does  not  claim  to  be  typical  as  a  psycholog- 
ical document  any  more  than  the  writer  himself 


FOREWORD  ix 

would  claim  to  be  considered  typical  as  a  Euro- 
pean. The  reaction  of  the  war  on  men's  minds 
is  bound  to  differ  widely  according  to  their  na- 
tionaUty,  their  personal  dispositions,  their  social 
condition,  their  level  of  education,  the  nature  of 
their  actual  war  experiences,  and  so  forth.  I 
doubt  whether  anybody  could  at  present  give 
first  hand  personal  evidence  on  a  subject  like  this, 
and  yet  make  good  a  claim  that  it  is  typical  of 
the  European  mind  at  large.  As  soon  as  evi- 
dence ceases  to  be  personal,  not  much  reliance 
can  be  placed  on  its  accuracy.  And  subjective 
accuracy  is  all  I  claim  for  these  confessions.  I 
will  make  them  documentarily  autobiographical 
evidence  with  the  help  of  my  diary,  my  notes, 
and  my  letters  to  my  wife  and  a  few  friends. 

I  realise  that  the  form  I  have  chosen  will  make 
a  certain  demand  upon  the  reader's  patience  and 
leniency.  Apparent  inconsistencies  will  occa- 
sionally reflect  the  contradictory  impressions 
made  upon  the  writer's  mind  by  the  diversity  and 
rapid  succession  of  experiences;  while  any  un- 
couthness  of  style  or  expression  may  be  due  to 
the  necessity  of  setting  forth  my  innermost 
thoughts  in  a  foreign  tongue,  and  this  in  spite  of 
the  assistance  of  my  cousin,  George  Greenland, 
Jr.,  of  London,  who  suggested  numerous  im- 
provements in  my  manuscript.  Nevertheless,  I 
have  thought  that  it  was  better  to  sacrifice  form 
to  the  recording  of  my  impressions  in  the  order 


X  FOREWORD 

in  which  they  occurred,  and  whilst  they  are  still 
vivid  in  my  mind. 

The  views  recorded  in  this  book  are  those  of 
what  in  Europe  we  used  to  call  a  socialist.  In 
America  I  would  probably  be  called  a  radical, 
for  I  would  no  more  identify  myself  with  the 
Socialist  Party  of  America  than  with  the  Rus- 
sian Bolshevik.  As  such,  these  views  are  typical 
only  of  a  minority  of  the  Europeans  of  the  so- 
called  educated  class;  but,  on  the  other  hand, 
they  may  throw  some  light  on  what  post-war 
socialism  is  going  to  be  in  Western  Europe.  The 
war  has  "radicalized"  Europe  to  such  an  extent 
that  a  constitutional  seizure  of  power  by  labour 
in  most  countries  seems  to  be  within  the  possi- 
bilities of  a  near  future.  But  whilst  giving  social- 
ism a  chance  to  pass  from  the  stage  of  agitation 
to  that  of  realisation,  it  has  been  made  manifest 
that,  in  Western  Europe  at  least,  practical  so- 
cialism is  going  to  prove  itself  very  different 
from  theoretical  pre-war  socialism.  I  am  con- 
fident that  American  readers  who  are  anxious  to 
gather  first  hand  information  on  the  state  of 
mind  of  European  socialists  will  welcome  limited 
and  fragmentary,  but  personally  sincere,  evi- 
dence rather  than  general  descriptions,  whose  ac- 
curacy is  necessarily  in  inverse  ratio  to  the  scope 
of  the  ground  they  cover. 

There  is  another  reason  why  I  insist  on  the 
subjective  sincerity  of  this  book.     It  is  because 


FOREWORD  xi 

I  feel  the  need  to  apologise  beforehand  for  say- 
ing things  which  may  hurt  the  feelings  of  many 
people.  I  shall  have,  for  instance,  to  analyse  and 
discuss  notions  as  taboo  to  the  common  citizen  as 
those  of  patriotism,  heroism,  and  duty.  I  trust 
that  the  constructive  aim  of  this  analysis  will  not 
escape  the  notice  of  the  reader  who  will  be  pa- 
tient enough  to  follow  the  story  of  my  mental 
evolution  to  the  end.  Yet  I  am  afraid  that  the 
mere  fact  of  admitting  doubt,  which  is  of  course 
an  essential  condition  to  any  analytical  thinking, 
will  hurt  the  sentiment  of  people  who  consider 
doubting  itself  as  an  offence.  So  let  those  who 
expect  "dulcet  rhymes"  of  me  lay  this  book  aside, 
and,  following  the  advice  of  Walt  Whitman  to 
"a  certain  civilian,"  "go  lull  themselves  with 
piano  tunes."  The  others,  I  hope,  will  keep  in 
mind  that  I  have  learned  my  lesson  on  the  battle- 
fields of  a  war  which  has  not  only  changed  the 
map  of  the  world,  but  also  the  mind  of  the  men 
who  have  fought  it.  And  the  greatest  lesson  I 
have  learned  there  was  to  think  earnestly,  sin- 
cerely and  ruthlessly.  Oh,  how  trivial  all  I 
thought  and  did  before  the  war  seems  to  me  now  I 
I  feel  as  though  I.  did  not  really  start  living  un- 
til the  constant  menace  of  near  death  to  myself 
and  those  for  whom  I  was  responsible  gave  Hfe 
the  value  of  sacrifice.  It  is  one  thing  to  play  with 
words  and  theories,  and  to  send  them  out  into 
the  world,  the  world  as  it  was  in  those  times, 


xii  FOREWORD 

before  everything  had  to  be  paid  for  in  blood. 
But  it  is  another  thing  to  see  how — 

"That  flesh  we  had  nursed  from  the  first  in  all  cleanness  was 

given 
To  corruption  unveiled  and  assailed  by  the  malice  of  Heaven — 
By   the   heart-shaking  jests   of   Decay  where   it   lolled    on   the 

wires — 
To  be  blanched  or  gay-painted  by  fumes — to   be   cindered   by 

fires — 
To  be  senselessly  tossed  and  retossed  in  stale  mutilation 
From  crater  to  crater — "  * 

And  then,  to  have  to  kill  and  maim  and  bhnd 
human  beings  on  the  other  side;  to  have  to 
answer  the  shrill  voice  of  one's  own  conscience 
with  its  insistent  Why?  For  at  any  moment 
one  had  to  be  ready  to  die  with  this  question 
satisfied.  And  I  for  one  could  not  do  this  with 
the  argument  of  the  mere  accident  that  made 
me  born  a  Belgian  citizen  instead  of  a  subject  of 
the  Kaiser.  Having  been  through  this  cross- 
examination  by  Death,  and  having  finally  found 
a  satisfactory  answer  to  that  great  Why  gives 
one  the  self-confidence  required  for  saying  what 
one  believes  to  be  true  and  good,  and  the  cer- 
tainty that  everything  is  true  and  good  that  pro- 
motes life  and  makes  mankind  fit  for  it. 

So  all  I  can  say  in  defence  of  this  book  is  that, 
as  a  record  of  the  spiritual  life  of  one  out  of 
millions  of  soldiers,  it  is  un  livre  de  bonne  foy. 
Perhaps  I  am  too  sanguine  in  expecting  that, 
with  so  limited  a  claim  to  the  interest  and  per- 
haps even  to  the  sympathy  of  the  general  public, 

*  R.  Kipling.    The  Honours  of  War  (A  Diversity  of  Creatures). 


FOREWORD  xiii 

it  will  be  welcomed  abroad.  If  I  dare  to  sub- 
mit it  at  all  to  the  judgment  of  the  American 
public,  it  is  because  I  have  been  struck  during 
my  stay  in  the  United  States  in  1918  by  the 
great  and  growing  attention  paid  there  to  all 
aspects  of  war  psychology.  I  came  into  contact 
with  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  people  in  practi- 
cally every  part  of  the  Union,  and  my  conclu- 
sion was  that  in  no  belligerent  country  has  there 
been  more  thought  given  to  the  philosophy  of 
war  and  reconstruction  than  in  America.  With 
the  exception  of  a  very  few,  mostly  English 
writers  and  thinkers,  nobody  in  Europe  seems  to 
have  known  any  other  war  problem  than  how  to 
win. 

I  am  positive  in  asserting  that  the  majority, 
even  of  young  intellectuals  whom  I  have  met  in 
Belgian  and  British  officers'  messes,  have  never 
given  an  hour's  thought  to  the  meaning  of  the 
war  from  a  broader  viewpoint  than  that  of  mili- 
tary or  diplomatic  operations.  They  knew  they 
were  fighting  for  their  homes,  for  their  country's 
independence — exactly  as  the  Germans  thought 
they  did  themselves — and  that  was  enough. 
Perhaps  they  would  not  have  found  it  so  easy 
to  die  if  they  had  begun  to  analyze  further,  for 
analyzing  means  doubting,  and  doubting  means, 
at  least  temporarily,  a  weakening  of  the  purpose. 
And  there  was  to  be  no  weakening  at  all  if  one 
did  not  want  to  be  crushed  by  the  "Hun." 


xiv  FOREWORD 

In  America  it  was  different.  It  took  nearly 
three  years  to  bring  the  nation  to  reaHze  that  it 
had  to  take  part  in  the  war.  In  the  meantime 
its  leaders  did  the  doubting  and  analyzing,  and 
they  ultimately  came  to  a  conclusion  inspired  by 
a  broader  viewpoint  than  that  of  national  in- 
terest. Even  after  April,  1917,  America  as  a 
Democracy,  and  to  a  large  extent  as  a  Democ- 
racy of  cosmopohtan  extraction,  had  to  bring 
her  own  people  to  the  realisation  of  the  ideal 
issues  at  stake  before  the  full  effect  of  her  inter- 
vention could  be  felt.  Whilst  the  Belgians,  for 
instance,  all  knew  that  they  had  to  fight  on  the 
3rd  of  August,  1914,  because  they  saw  their  own 
homes  and  cities  threatened  by  a  brutal  invader, 
practically  every  individual  American  had  to  be 
convinced  by  reasoning  that  he  had  to  fight,  not 
for  his  own  home,  but  for  less  immediate  pur- 
poses common  to  mankind.  That  is  why  I  think 
I  may  say,  without  doing  any  injustice  to  my 
compatriots,  or  their  European  alhes,  that  Amer- 
ica fought  with  a  wider  consciousness  of  her  aims 
than  any  other  nation.  Nor  did  she  fight  any 
the  worse  for  having  that  consciousness! 

It  is  this  identification  of  America  with  the 
conscience  of  mankind,  more  even  than  her 
formidably  increased  economic  and  military 
power,  that  has  made  her  the  umpire  in  this 
war.  And  now  the  day  of  the  Great  Settle- 
ment has  come,  a  Settlement  which  involves  not 


FOREWORD  XV 

only  the  fate  of  empires  and  territories,  but  the 
social  and  moral  regeneration  of  the  peoples  of 
Europe,  once  more  we  look  across  the  Atlantic 
to  read  America's  thoughts.  For  we  need  her 
to  help  us  reconstruct,  as  much  as  we  needed 
her  to  help  us  fight.  We  need  the  assistance  of 
her  capital,  of  her  social  workers,  of  her  diplo- 
mats— but  above  all,  we  need  the  inspiration  of 
her  ideals. 

H.  DE  Man. 

London,  April,  1919. 


BEFORE   THE   WAR 

Voua  me  demanderez  si  j'aime  ma  patrie. 
Oui;   j'aime  fort  aussi  I'Espagne  et  la  Turquie. 
Je  ne  hais  pas  la  Perse  et  je  crois  les  Indous 
De  tres  honn^tes  gens  qui  boivent  comme  nous. 
Mais  je  hais  les  cites,  les  paves  et  les  bornes. 
Tout  ce  qui  porte  I'homme  a  se  mettre  en  troupeau, 
Pour  vivre  entre  deux  murs  et  quatre  faces  mornes, 
Le  front  sous  un  moellon,   les  pieds   sur   un  tombeau. 
Alfred  de  Musset,  La  Coupe  et  les  L^vres  (Dedication). 

When  I  joined  the  Belgian  army  as  a  volun- 
teer on  the  3d  of  August,  1914,  I  was  much  less 
of  a  citizen  of  my  native  country  than  of  Ger- 
many, England,  or  France.  Since  the  beginning 
of  my  student's  career  my  ambition  had  been  to 
become  a  "citizen  of  the  world."  From  the  age 
of  eighteen  until  a  short  time  before  the  war  I 
had  travelled  extensively  through  most  Euro- 
pean countries,  spent  five  years  at  German  and 
Austrian  universities,  one  year  in  England, 
and  shorter  periods  in  France,  Holland,  Italy, 
Switzerland,  and  Scandinavia.  I  had  learned  to 
speak  and  write  French,  German,  and  Enghsh 
with  nearly  the  same  ease  as  my  native  Flemish 
language.  My  purpose  was  to  become  acquaint- 
ed with  the  conditions  of  hfe,  the  science  and 
literature  of  the  great  European  nations,  and  I 


'•\f^-^5'i:!T'H;E/  OF  A  MIND 

do  not  think  that  many  men  of  my  age  have 
made  a  greater  effort  to  come  near  to  the  type  of 
a  world  citizen,  in  the  European  sense  at  least 
than  I.  Even  during  the  three  years — 1914  till 
1917 — which  I  spent  mostly  in  Belgium,  I  con- 
tinued to  take  more  interest  in  international  poli- 
tics than  in  Belgian  affairs.  I  used  to  read  the 
great  British,  German,  and  French  newspapers 
before  the  home  product,  and  I  do  not  think  that 
more  than  five  per  cent  of  my  library  was  occu- 
pied by  native  authors. 

I  want  to  make  it  quite  clear  at  the  outset  that 
my  ideal  was  not  cosmopolitanism,  but  a  sort  of 
ectectic  internationalism.  I  never  felt  attracted 
by  the  shallow  cosmopolitanism  of  those  who  pre- 
tend to  see  no  difference  between  nations,  be- 
cause all  they  see  of  them  are  a  few  material  in- 
stitutions which  they  have  in  common,  whilst  the 
higher  and  subtler  things  that  differentiate  them 
escape  their  notice.  This  is  bound  to  happen  to 
the  traveller  who  judges  France  by  what  he 
sees  of  the  Paris  Boulevards,  England  by  Picca- 
dilly, Russia  by  the  Newski  Prospect,  America 
by  New  York's  Fifth  Avenue,  and  less  impor- 
tant countries  by  a  hasty  visit  to  their  ports. 
This  class  of  migratory  cosmopolitans  only  see 
that  superficial  and  in  itself  cosmopolitan  aspect 
of  civilisation  which  the  Belgian  nationalist 
writer,  Edmond  Picard,  shrewdly  called  "Kell- 
nerism."    Kellnerism  is  as  universal  as  the  insti- 


BEFORE  THE  WAR  3 

tution  of  the  German  waiter  used  to  be.  To  the 
"Kellnerists"  the  world  is  indeed  one,  for  a  ship's 
cabin  or  a  Pullman  car  look  and  smell  very  much 
the  same  in  every  part  of  the  globe.  There  is  no 
more  difference  between  the  type  and  manners 
of  the  people  one  meets  in  a  Palace  Hotel  in 
Cairo,  in  Brussels  or  in  Chicago  than  between  the 
tastes  of  dishes  one  gets  there.  To  the  cosmopoli- 
tan all  countries  look  ahke.  To  the  internation- 
alist the  world  is  a  wonderful  living  mosaic,  deriv- 
ing its  beauty  from  the  infinite  variety  of  national 
colouring.  A  citizen  of  Europe  meant  to  me 
one  who  strives  to  understand  and  to  sympathise 
with  those  characteristics  of  every  country  which 
are  an  essential  element  of  what,  as  a  whole,  con- 
stitutes European  civilisation.  Therefore,  in 
every  country  where  I  lived  my  passionate  pur- 
suit was  to  look,  not  for  what  its  culture  had  in 
common  with  that  of  other  nations,  but  for  what 
was  peculiarly  its  own.  To  grow  acquainted  with 
it  meant  to  love  it  and  make  it  part  of  my  spirit- 
ual self.  So  I  gradually  became  a  French  patriot, 
a  German  patriot,  an  English  patriot,  as  my 
knowledge  of  French,  German,  and  English 
civihsation  grew  more  intimate.  My  European 
internationalism  was  based,  not  on  a  denial  of 
nationahty,  but  on  a  conscious  attempt  to  iden- 
tify myself  with  the  spirit  of  several  great 
European  nations.  AVhat  makes  Central  and 
Western  Europe  so  beautiful  and  passionately 


4   ^  THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

interesting  to  my  mind  is  its  infinite  variety.  On 
this  smallest  of  all  continents — a  mere  peninsula 
stretching  out  beyond  the  Russian  plains  from 
the  western  extremity  of  Asia  —  humanity 
shows  itself  more  diverse  than  anywhere  else  on 
earth,  much  more  so  even  than  the  landscape, 
thanks  to  the  continuous  and  intricate  blending 
of  races,  languages,  institutions  and  civilisations 
involved  in  two  thousand  years  of  invasions,  mi- 
grations and  wars.  Yet  my  European  patriot- 
ism was  not  at  all  exclusive  of  the  rest  of  the 
world.  On  the  contrary  I  considered  it  as  only  a 
step  towards  becoming  a  citizen  of  the  world  at 
large,  which  I  so  far  only  knew  through  litera- 
ture. Walt  Whitman  gave  me  a  foretaste  of 
what  it  would  be  to  love  America,  and  Kipling 
more  than  anybody  else  taught  me  that  contact 
with  exotic  civilisation  was  a  necessary  part  of  a 
white  man's  training. 

The  love  of  my  native  country  played  but  a 
part  in  my  life.  It  is  true  that,  when  the  war 
broke  out,  I  found  that  something  in  the  subcon- 
scious impulses  which  are  after  all  the  main- 
spring of  even  an^educated  man's  actions,  was 
particularly  associated  with  the  land  of  my 
birth  and  childhood.  These  fundamental  im- 
pulses, that  really  make  a  man  what  he  is,  can  no 
more  be  obliterated  by  later  attempts  to  identify 
oneself  with  the  soul  of  other  nations,  than  hav- 
ing learnt  foreign  languages  can  make  one  forget 


BEFORE  THE  WAR  5 

the  sound  of  the  mother  tongue.  This  sound,  the 
images  associated  with  it,  and  the  instinctive 
likes  and  dishkes  formed  in  those  early  years 
remain  paramount.  It  takes  a  strong  cause, 
which,  hke  dreaming  or  death  agony,  releases 
the  strings  of  self-consciousness,  to  make  one 
realise  how  much  more  of  these  impulses  remain 
present  and  active  than  one  would  think. 

Yet  although  they  are  associated  with  one's 
native  language  and  the  recollections  of  child- 
hood, they  have  little  to  do  with  nationality  as 
such.  They  are  an  essential  part  of  national 
feehng,  but  no  more  identical  with  it  than  are  the 
topographical  boundaries  of  home,  or,  at  the  ut- 
most, of  the  native  town,  with  the  frontiers  of 
the  country.  This  is'  especially  the  case  with 
Belgium,  where  several  languages  are  spoken, 
and  where  my  native  Flemish  tongue,  or,  more 
particularly  still,  my  local  dialect,  does  not  iden- 
tify itself  with  the  existence  of  the  State.  So 
though  my  instinctive  patriotism  would  link  me 
with  my  home,  with  my  family,  with  the  customs 
and  manners  of  my  class,  and  with  the  aspect  of 
the  small  part  of  the  country  where  I  received 
my  impressions  as  a  child,  it  would  not  do  so 
with  the  country  as  a  whole. 

In  so  far  as  patriotism  means  attachment  to 
the  institutions  and  the  national  spirit  of  a  coun- 
try, I  candidly  confess  that  in  the  ordinary  sense 
of  the  term,  I  never  was  much  of  a  Belgian 


6       THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

patriot.  If  I  were  asked  whether  the  fact  that 
I  have  fought  for  years  with  the  Belgian  army, 
and  shared  its  glory  and  its  sufferings  as  well  as 
those  of  the  whole  nation,  has  not  created  a  new 
tie  between  me  and  my  countrymen,  I  am  afraid 
that  I  could  only  to  a  limited  extent  answer  in 
the  affirmative.  There  is  certainly  a  very  strong 
sympathy  between  me  and  those  whose  suffer- 
ings I  have  shared,  but  as  far  as  it  is  really  a 
bond  of  feeling,  that  is,  based  on  actual  and  per- 
sonal experience,  it  only  applies  to  that  very 
small  portion  of  the  army  with  which  I  have 
actually  been  in  touch,  my  own  men,  and  my  own 
comrades.  On  the  other  hand,  as  far  as  military 
solidarity  is  the  outcome  of  conscious  thinking, 
it  is  not  at  all  confined  to  my  own  countrymen, 
for  I  naturally  extend  it  to  all  soldiers  who  have 
fought  for  the  same  cause.  My  intellectual  sym- 
pathy goes  out  to  the  poilu,  the  Tommy  and  the 
Sammy  and  all  their  allies,  as  well  as  to  the  Bel- 
gian soldier,  and  to  every  one  of  them  in  direct 
ratio  not  so  much  of  their  sufferings  and  their 
courage  as  of  the  extent  to  which  their  purpose 
in  fighting  was  identical  with  mine.  Otherwise  I 
might  include  the  German  soldiers  as  well,  who 
certainly  have  fought  as  bravely  and  suffered  as 
much  as  most  of  us.  But  this  is  another  story. 
My  point  for  the  moment  is  that  military  solidar- 
ity created  by  the  war  is  either  too  narrow  or 
too  broad  a  feeling  to  add  much  strength  to  the 


BEFORE  THE  WAR  7 

patriotism  of  a  man  who  never  looked  upon  the 
war  from  a  purely  national  viewpoint.  , 

The  only  way  in  which  I  ever  felt  any  Belgian 
patriotism  in  the  real  sense  of  the  word  is  by 
loving  Belgium  as  a  microcosm  of  Europe.  The 
existence  of  Belgian  nationality,  or  to  put  it 
more  exactly,  of  a  pecuhar  Belgian  quality  of 
civihsation,  is  a  matter  of  controversy  amongst 
historians.  There  is  no  doubt  that  what  mostly 
differentiates  Belgian  culture  from  that  of  the 
neighbouring  nations  is  local  or  provincial  char- 
acteristics; whilst  the  small  class  who  have  any 
common  characteristics  beyond  those,  mostly  de- 
rive them  from  French,  or — in  the  case  of  a  very 
few — from  Dutch  civihsation. 

There  is  no  better  proof  of  this  than  the  fact 
that  most  books  by  Belgian  writers  were  read 
much  less  in  their  own  country  than  abroad. 
Practically  all  the  Belgians  who  wrote  French 
had  their  works  published  in  France  and  sold 
more  copies  of  them  in  Paris  alone  than  in  the 
whole  of  Belgium.  The  Flemish  writers  did  the 
same  in  Holland.  The  reputation  of  our  French 
writers  was  made  in  Paris,  that  of  the  Flemings 
in  Holland,  before  they  attained  any  popularity 
in  their  native  land.  Even  certain  translations 
into  German  found  more  readers  in  Teutonic 
countries  and  helped  more  to  advertise  their 
authors  in  Belgium  itself  than  their  original  pub- 
lications had  done  at  home.    Pirenne's  "History 


8      THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

of  Belgium,"  the  standard  work  of  Belgian  neo- 
nationalism,  was  published  in  a  German  transla- 
tion and  popularised  beyond  the  Rhine  before 
it  attracted  any  notice  in  Belgium;  and  the 
excellent  German  translation  of  Verhaeren's 
poems  by  Stefan  Zweig  had  made  the  greatest 
French  writing  poet  of  pre-war  Belgium  more 
popular  in  Germany  than  in  his  own  country. 

The  lack  of  a  national  culture  in  Belgium, 
however,  proves  nothing  against  Belgium's  right 
to  exist  as  a  State.  State  and  nationality  are 
two  different  things.  Switzerland  is  another  in- 
stance of  a  State,  formed  of  fragments  of  nation- 
alities, strongly  united  by  their  attachment  to  a 
common  political  organisation  which  has  for  cen- 
turies safeguarded  their  existence,  under  condi- 
tions derived  from  the  peculiar  natural  situation 
of  the  country  and  the  uniform  economic  mode 
of  living  that  has  resulted  therefrom.  In  spite 
of  what  I  have  said  above,  I  do  not  in  the  least 
agree  with  those  who  consider  that  Belgium  as 
a  State  is  an  artificial  creation  of  professional 
diplomacy.  There  is  no  doubt  anyhow  that  the 
great  majority  of  Belgians,  Flemish  or  Walloon, 
consider  the  maintenance  of  the  State  as  an  es- 
sential guarantee  for  the  conservation  of  certain 
things,  and  especially  the  freedom  of  their  local 
and  provincial  institutions,  which  are  dear  to 
them.  But  these  things  have  very  little  to  do 
with  nationality  as  a  cultural  value.    The  culture 


BEFORE  THE  WAR  9 

of  the  Walloons,  and  of  those  educated  Flemings 
who  use  French  as  their  usual  language,  links 
them  with  France  and  the  Latin  world;  whilst 
that  of  the  mass  of  the  Flemings  unites  them  with 
the  Dutch  (who  speak  the  same  language)  and 
the  Teutonic  races. 

What  they  have  in  common,  and  what  consti- 
tutes the  essence  of  Belgian  patriotism,  is  their 
attachment  to  certain  civic  institutions  and  a  cer- 
tain civic  spirit.  These  institutions  are  the  out- 
come of  living  for  centuries,  in  spite  of  different 
language  and  culture,  under  similar  economic, 
political  and  religious  conditions;  and  this  civic 
spirit  results  from  centuries  of  struggling  in 
common  for  the  defence  of  these  institutions 
against  continuous  attempts  at  absorption  by  the 
great  neighbouring  powers. 

The  only  plausible  theory  of  Belgian  patri- 
otism is  that  which  bases  it  on  those  common  con- 
ditions and  common  sufferings,  and  not  on  the 
existence  of  a  distinctive  and  peculiar  national 
culture,  which  is  a  myth.  These  conditions  arise 
from  the  situation  of  Belgium  as  a  natural  gate- 
way between  the  three  great  currents  of  eco- 
nomic and  cultural  life  in  Western  Europe — 
Latin,  Teutonic  and  Anglo-Saxon.  They  have 
made  it  racially  the  melting  pot,  economically  the 
turning  plate,  militarily  the  battlefield,  politi- 
cally the  buffer  state,  and  spiritually  the  micro- 
cosm of  Europe. 


10    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

In  a  small  country  like  Belgium,  with  less  than 
a  century's  existence  as  an  independent  state, 
and  no  unity  of  language  or  culture  based 
thereon,  this  universal  aspect  of  Belgium's  func- 
tion as  an  element  in  the  progress  of  European 
civilisation  is  the  only  intellectual  justification 
of  patriotic  feeling.  It  is  the  theoretical  founda- 
tion of  the  writings  of  Henri  Pirenne,  and  the 
essential  inspiration  of  our  great  poet,  Emile 
Verhaeren,  to  whom  Belgium  stood  as  the  sym- 
bol of  the  intensive  life  of  the  modern  industrial 
world. 

The  only  sense  in  which  Belgian,  patriotism 
as  a  cultural  value  ever  appealed  to  me,  was 
through  my  appreciation  of  its  historical  func- 
tion in  the  ensemble  of  European  civilisation, 
and  through  my  admiration  for  the  skilful  ac- 
tivity of  its  artisans  and  traders,  the  tenacious 
devotion  to  local  and  provincial  independence  of 
its  historical  heroes,  the  broad  universal  vision 
of  its  great  exponents  in  art  and  literature,  by 
which  it  strove  to  fulfil  this  function  since  the 
early  Middle  Ages.  The  more  I  loved  my  coun- 
try in  this  wide  sense  the  more  I  was  led  to  value 
and  venerate  the  culture  of  the  nations  between 
whom  Belgium  was  the  hyphen.  Being  a  Bel- 
gian was  thus  only  a  step  towards  becoming  a 
European. 

So,  on  the  one  hand,  I  was  far  from  believing, 
like   so  many   pre-war   socialists   and  to-day's 


BEFORE  THE  WAR  11 

Bolsheviki,  in  what  the  Austrian,  Otto  Bauer 
(the  first  to  attempt  a  scientific  analysis  of  na- 
tionality from  a  socialist  viewpoint),  calls  the 
naive  cosmopolitanism  which  characterises  the 
earlier  sentimental  stages  of  socialism.  But,  on 
the  other  hand,  I  was  equally  far  from  allowing 
my  sense  of  nationality  to  lead  me  to  jingoism 
or  political  nationahsm,  which  consists  in  the  be- 
hef  that  one's  own  nationality  has  rights  which 
the  others  have  not.  I  was  always  as  disgusted 
by  the  misuse  of  patriotism,  as  a  feehng  of  at- 
tachment to  a  particular  type  of  civilisation,  for 
the  fostering  of  political  enmity  against  other 
nations,  and  promoting  mihtarism  and  imperial- 
ism, as  I  was  by  the  prostitution  of  religious  feel- 
ing to  the  purposes  of  worldly  domination.  I 
was  convinced  that  there  should  be  the  same  dif- 
ference between  patriotism  and  the  State  as 
there  is — or  ought  to  be — ^between  religion  and 
the  Church.  Love  of  one's  own  country  need 
not  involve  any  hostility  towards  another  coun- 
try. On  the  contrary,  if  it  be  sincere  and  en- 
lightened, it  should  tend  to  strengthen  the  ties  of 
sympathy  between  them.  Real  patriotism  has 
an  inherent  tendency  to  become  universal,  just 
as  love  of  individual  men  and  women  helps  one 
to  love  mankind. 

It  is  true  that  patriotism  involves  a  desire  to 
maintain  the  poUtical  autonomy  of  a  nation  and 
the  peculiar  institutions  which  are  an  element  of 


12     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

its  cultural  life,  and  which  may  be  threatened  by 
attack  from  abroad.  As  long  as  no  trust  can  be 
placed  in  international  institutions  to  make  such 
an  attack  impossible  or  fruitless,  a  patriot  will 
have  to  be  prepared  to  defend  his  country.  But 
this  does  not  mean  that  patriotism  justifies  any 
and  every  sort  of  war.  On  the  contrary  if  the 
only  patriots  were  those  who  refused  to  fight 
save  in  defence  of  their  country,  there  would  be 
no  wars  at  all — for  lack  of  aggressors.  But  this 
can  only  be  if  each  people  knows  the  true  rela- 
tion in  which  it  stands  towards  other  nations. 
Have  we  not  seen  in  1914,  as  often  before,  a  war 
begin  between  nations,  which  were  all  told  by 
their  rulers  that  they  were  fighting  in  self- 
defence  and  moreover  believed  it.  For  I  have 
no  doubt  that  the  great  mass  of  the  people  of 
the  Central  Powers  were  from  the  beginning 
convinced  that  they  were  fighting  to  defend  their 
country  against  the  aggression  of  a  wicked  foe 
intent  on  their  extermination.  So  easy  is  it  to 
use  the  disguise  of  patriotism  for  the  aggressive 
purposes  of  commercial  avidity,  the  pride  of  a 
military  caste,  or  the  ambitions  of  a  dynasty. 

Yet  my  training  as  a  historian  had  put  me  on 
my  guard  against  a  too  subjective  or  too  abso- 
lute outlook  on  things.  In  consequence  I  did  not 
feel  towards  war  in  general  in  the  same  way  as 
those  who  probably  formed  the  most  numerous 
class  of  pacifists.    I  would  call  them  the  ethical 


BEFORE  THE  WAR  13 

pacifists,  for  their  hatred  of  war — not  any  war  in 
particular,  but  war  in  general,  at  all  times,  under 
any  circumstances,  and  from  the  viewpoint  of 
any  of  the  belHgerents — is  based  on  the  ethical 
principle  that  no  man  should  kill  a  man.  Their 
most  consistent  exponents  are  the  Christian  non- 
resisters  of  the  Tolstoian  type. 

My  hatred  of  war  was  based  more  on  history 
than  on  ethics.  But,  indeed,  can  individual  eth- 
ics be  sound  if  they  come  into  conflict  with  the 
laws  of  social  progress?  Sound  ethics  must  aim 
at  making  mankind  fitter  to  live.  This  can  only 
be  achieved  by  social  progress,  that  is  to  say,  by 
evolving  forms  of  human  organisation,  and  civil- 
isation which  are  better  adapted  to  assist  human 
society  in  its  struggle  with  hostile  forces  of 
nature.  History  teaches  us  that  tliis  evolution 
is  not  a  logical,  but  a  dialectical  process.  I  mean, 
it  is  realised,  not  by  straight  linear  development 
starting  from  one  cause  towards  one  aim,  but 
by  a  continuous  struggle  between  individuals, 
classes,  tribes,  nations,  races,  according  to  their 
own  conflicting  interests  and  ideals.  Progress 
consists  in  the  victory  of  the  form  of  organisation 
that  is  fittest  to  survive,  because  it  proves  better 
adapted  to  the  fulfilment  of  human  needs  under 
given  natural  circumstances  and  to  the  develop- 
ment of  material  and  moral  resources.  Wars, 
like  revolutions,  racial,  class  and  religious  con- 


U    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

flicts,  have  been  one  of  the  agencies  through 
which  this  dialectical  process  is  accomplished. 

We  may  conceive  of  a  state  of  things  where 
humanity  will  have  escaped  the  iron  necessity  that 
has  so  far  condemned  it  to  the  sufferings  and 
waste  of  energy  this  dialectical  process  involves. 
The  great  exponent  of  scientific  socialism,  Karl 
Marx,  has  referred  to  this  possibility  as  "the 
leap  from  the  realm  of  necessity  into  the  realm 
of  freedom."  This  is  subject  to  the  condition 
that  humanity  (or  a  sufficiently  important  part 
of  it  to  be  able  to  manage  without  interference 
from  the  other  more  backward  parts)  should 
take  real  control  of  its  common  destinies,  solidar- 
ise  its  class  and  national  interests,  and  achieve 
by  a  common  conscious  will  what  is  now  the  re- 
sult of  internal  strife.  We  are  still  so  far  from 
this  ideal  that  we  have  hardly  begun  to  discern 
the  laws  which  govern  our  social  hfe  and  con- 
flicts. Even  our  boldest  attempts  at  interfering, 
either  by  legislation  or  by  freely  organised  initi- 
ative, with  the  laws  that  govern  the  production 
and  distribution  of  wealth,  do  not  go  beyond  the 
surface  of  things.  And  as  to  the  relations  be- 
tween nations  or  states,  at  present  our  most  opti- 
mistic expectations  are  not  that  we  shall  see  the 
white  race  governing  itself  as  a  whole  according 
to  the  rules  of  its  own  will  and  reason;  but  that 
we  shall  perhaps  be  able  to  create  machinery  for 
gradually  replacing  war  by  arbitration  and  con- 


BEFORE  THE  WAR  15 

ciliation.  In  other  words,  we  cannot  hope  as  yet 
to  make  conflicts  superfluous  or  impossible,  but 
only  to  facilitate  their  solution  by  the  peaceful 
estabUshment  of  an  international  court  of  jus- 
tice to  prevent  recourse  to  actual  violence. 

Far,  then,  though  we  be  from  this  "realm  of 
freedom,"  there  is  no  doubt  that  it  is  the  ultimate 
aim  of  all  our  conscious  efforts,  as  well  as  the 
logical  outcome  of  the  increasing  power  over 
nature  which  the  unlimited  development  of  hu- 
man resources  gives  us.  All  great  religious 
movements,  as  well  as  democracy  and  socialism, 
are  moving  towards  that  aim,  though  by  different 
paths.  Religious  and  ethical  movements  gen- 
erally strive  towards  human  unity  through  re- 
forming individual  ethics;  political  and  social 
movements,  through  reforming  the  exterior  con- 
ditions under  which  men  live  and  which  again 
mainly  determine  this  ethical  attitude.  Ethical 
movements  as  such  have  failed  so  far  either  be- 
cause they  ignored  the  influence  of  material  con- 
ditions, or  else  because  (when  they  interfered 
with  them  through  conquering  pohtical  and  so- 
cial power)  they  lost  sight  of  their  original 
ethical  aims  and  led  to  intolerance  and  oppres- 
sion of  freedom. 

Democracy  ultimately  leads  to  self-govern- 
ment of  mankind  as  a  whole;  at  least,  it  is  the 
only  instrument  by  which  such  self-government 
can  be  freely  and  consciously  achieved. 


16     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

Socialism  aims  at  making  the  moral  unity  of 
humanity  possible  by  giving  society,  or  some 
form  of  organisation  which  represents  the  com- 
man  interest,  control  over  those  means  of  pro- 
ductive ownership  of  which  by  private  capital- 
ists now  creates  an  antagonism  of  interests  which 
makes  the  hostility  between  social  classes  deeper 
even  than  that  between  states. 

It  is  probably  through  a  combination  of  these 
three  great  forces — Christianity,  acting  on  indi- 
viduals, democracy  and  socialism,  on  the  political 
and  the  economic  conditions  of  life,  that  we  shall 
get  nearer  to  the  ideal  of  a  humanity  which,  ac- 
cording to  Faust's  vision  of  the  future,  will  enjoy 
"not  safety  against  nature,  perhaps,  but  activity 
and  freedom." 

In  the  meantime,  however,  we  are  still  in  the 
"realm  of  necessity,"  and  any  attempt  to  ignore 
its  laws,  by  giving  individual  men  ethical  direc- 
tions independent  of  the  conditions  under  which 
they  live  and  which  it  is  not  in  their  power  to 
alter  single-handed,  is  doomed  to  failure.  This 
inadequacy  of  the  means  of  the  ethical  pacifists 
to  the  end  they  have  in  view,  as  exemphfied  by 
Mr.  Henry  Ford's  adventure  with  his  "Peace 
Ship,"  is  the  tragi-comical  expression  of  this 
logical  impossibility. 

Experience  then  has  shown  that  purposes  like 
those  of  the  pacifists  who  wanted  to  make  all  wars 
impossible  could  not  be  obtained  by  mere  at- 


BEFORE  THE  WAR  17 

tempts  to  reform  the  ethics  of  individuals.  For 
the  latter  live  in  a  world  where  the  material  con- 
ditions of  the  antagonism  of  interests  between 
classes  and  states — originating  in  the  economic 
structure  of  society — still  rule  the  actions  of  men. 
There  have  been  situations  where  those  whose 
ideal  was  the  stopping  of  bloodshed  between  men 
have  yet  had  to  resort  to  bloodshed  in  civil  or 
national  war,  as  the  only  means  of  furthering 
the  reaUsation  of  their  ideal.  What  democrat  of 
to-day,  if  he  had  lived  in  France  in  1792,  would 
not  have  been  one  of  the  hundreds  of  thousands 
that  answered  the  call  of  "la  patrie  est  en  dan- 
ger" by  taking  up  arms  for  the  defence  of  the 
young  republic  against  the  champions  of  divine 
right?  Was  not  the  duty  of  Americans  who 
loved  freedom  equally  clear  in  the  Civil  War? 
And  in  1914  and  1917,  was  it  not  to  fight  for 
peace  that  men  took  up  arms  against  the  main 
and  inmiediate  menace  that  threatened  it  from 
Germany?  Have  we  not  seen,  in  the  first  glori- 
ous months  of  the  Russian  Revolution,  such  men 
as  the  Marxian  Plekhanoff,  the  humanitarian 
socialist  Kerensky,  the  gentle  anarchist-dream- 
er Prince  Kropotkine — who  had  all  repudiated 
the  Czar's  war  for  Constantinople — preach  the 
crusade  of  republican  Russia  fighting  to  defend 
her  new  freedom  against  German  and  Austrian 
invasion,  and  even  carrying,  by  an  offensive  re- 
sembhng  those  of  French  revolutionary  strategy 


18    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

in  1792  and  1793,  the  flag  of  liberty  into  the 
enemy's  lands? 

If  we  may  judge  by  results,  these  lovers  of 
peace,  who  were  not  afraid  of  fighting  for  the 
realisation  of  their  ideals,  or  at  least  of  certain 
conditions  essential  to  their  realisation,  have 
done  more  to  bring  humanity  nearer  to  a  state  of 
things  where  there  will  be  no  more  wars  than 
have  our  milk-and-water  pacifists,  those  bleating 
lambs  in  a  world  of  ravening  wolves.  Consistent 
ethical  pacifists,  who  applied  the  logical  conclu- 
sion of  their  principles,  and  actively  opposed 
any  warlike  activity,  such  as  conscientious  object- 
ors and  other  martyrs  of  a  forlorn  cause,  may  at 
least  have  achieved  the  moral  result  of  stirring 
consciences  that  could  only  be  roused  by  such 
loud  protests.  But  most  of  the  others  have  not 
even  the  sentimental  excuse  of  having  been  dem- 
onstratively and  heroically  passive.  By  declin- 
ing to  take  sides  when  millions  of  men  were  en- 
gaged in  a  deadly  struggle  for  the  maintenance 
of  institutions  which  are  vital  to  the  progress  of 
democracy  and  the  triumph  of  peace;  by  striving 
to  weaken  the  purpose  of  those  who  fought;  by 
threatening  to  spoil  them  of  the  results  of  their 
sacrifices  through  advocating  an  untimely  peace 
of  compromise,  they  have  done  more  harm  to 
their  own  cause  than  any  promoter  of  war  and 
militarism  could  have  done.  They  have  justified 
the  indictment  of  the  exponent  of  active  pacifism. 


BEFORE  THE  WAR  19 

Bertrand  Russell,*  who  describes  this  class  of 
people  as  "those  whose  impulsive  nature  is  more 
or  less  atrophied,"  and  concludes  as  follows: 

"In  spite  of  all  destruction  which  is  wrought 
by  the  impulses  that  lead  to  war,  there  is  more 
hope  for  a  nation  which  has  these  impulses  than 
for  a  nation  in  which  all  impulse  is  dead.  Im- 
pulse is  the  expression  of  life,  and  while  it  exists 
there  is  hope  of  its  turning  towards  life  instead 
of  towards  death;  but  lack  of  impulse  is  death, 
and  out  of  death  no  new  life  will  come." 

Here  we  touch  the  bottom  of  the  problem. 
The  difference  between  this  class  of  pacifism  and 
my  own  is  not  so  much  a  discrepancy  of  thinking 
as  an  antagonism  of  temperament.  With  my 
natural  impulses  of  activity  and  combativeneas, 
I  was,  as  a  pacifist,  temperamentally  bound  to 
become  either  a  fanatic  conscientious  objector  or 
a  crusader  against  Prussian  miUtarism. 

What  saved  me  from  being  the  former,  was 
not  only  the  intellectual  disposition  which  I 
largely  ascribe  to  my  historical  training,  but  also 
and  primarily  my  native  realism,  inherited  from 
generations  of  Flemish  ancestors.  Centuries  of 
a  prosperous,  active  and  free  life  as  artisans  and 
traders  have  given  the  Flemish  mind  a  very 
marked  disposition  to  concrete  thinking,  just  as 
they  have  made  their  temperament  sensual  and 
their  philosophic  outlook  materialistic.    It  seems 

♦  Bertrand  Russell,  Why  Men  Fight,  pp.  16  and  17. 


20    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

as  though  to  live  as  homines  forti  et  bene  nutriti 
on  a  rich  soil  gives  men  that  faculty  for  grasping 
and  expressing  realities  which  has  made  the 
Flemings  traditionally  excel  in  all  plastic  arts; 
in  descriptive  literature;  sciences,  as  anatomy, 
medicine,  botany,  which  require  observation 
rather  than  speculation.  For  the  Flemings  show 
a  distinct  inability  in  abstract  thinking,  and 
therefore  cut  a  poor  figure  in  philosophy  and 
speculative  sciences  in  general.  Abstract  sci- 
ence, in  the  same  way  as  music,  seems  to  thrive 
better  on  a  meagre  soil,  and  to  appeal  most  to 
the  minds  of  peoples  who,  either  through  lack  of 
natural  resources  or  through  oppression,  are  de- 
nied the  satisfaction  of  driving  their  roots  deep 
down  into  the  friendly  earth.  Be  that  as  it  may, 
I  think  I  am  not  far  wrong  when  in  looking  for 
the  fundamental  impulses  of  my  actions,  I  as- 
cribe the  reahstic  nature  of  my  idealism  to  the 
practical  turn  of  mind  which  is  in  my  race. 

In  fact,  I  believe  that  my  opposition  to  war 
rested,  before  1914,  not  so  much  on  the  grounds 
that  war  in  itself  was  wrong  but  that  it  was  a 
wrong  means  to  the  end  I  had  in  view.  This  end 
I  would  call  Sociahsm— were  I  not  afraid  to  lay 
myself  open  to  misunderstandings  by  accepting 
without  immediate  detailed  definition  a  label 
which  covers  so  many  different  goods. 

But  I  hope  it  will  be  clear  to  the  reader  by  now 
that  I  am  trying  to  explain  my  actions  not  so 


BEFORE  THE  WAR  21 

much  by  intellectual  reasoning  as  by  the  impulses 
which  determined  them.  Reasoning  served 
mostly  to  test  the  strength  of  impulses,  to  sift 
them  and  summon  up  other  impulses  to  coimter- 
act  those  that  appeared  hostile  to  my  general 
purpose.  Therefore,  to  comprehend  my  attitude 
in  August,  1914,  and  later,  a  detailed  prelimi- 
nary description  of  my  poHtical  views  and  ideals 
is  as  irrelevant  as  an  understanding  of  the  tem- 
peramental impulses  which  led  to  them  is  essen- 
tial. 

My  social  ideals  and  my  social  activities,  then, 
were  mainly  determined  by  the  following  causes : 

Instinctive  sympathy  with  the  under-dog,  the 
result  of  a  certain  chivalrous  disposition  which  is 
probably  partly  hereditary  and  partly  cultivated 
by  fatherly  education.  An  intense  love  of  life 
and  capacity  for  happiness,  which,  combined  with 
this  chivalrous  disposition,  found  an  outlet  in  the 
active  desire  to  make  others  happy,  and  espe- 
cially to  communicate  to  them  the  knowledge 
which  I  owed  to  my  education  as  a  "privileged- 
born."  A  certain  capacity  for  intellectual  enthu- 
siasm which  made  me,  from  the  age  of  adoles- 
cence, disgusted  with  the  crudely  materiahstic 
and  egoistic  outlook  of  my  class — and,  more  es- 
pecially, with  the  indeed  very  low  moral  and  in- 
tellectual level  of  the  wealthy  classes  in  my  native 
city — and  which  at  the  same  time  awakened  my 
sympathy  with  any  movement  that,  like  Belgian 


22     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

socialism,  had  a  strong  idealistic  and  artistic  ap- 
peal. A  constructive  turn  of  the  imagination 
which  made  my  mind  receptive  to  schemes  and 
ideals  of  social  regeneration  (my  first  socialist 
ideals  had  a  purely  Utopian  character,  and  my 
text-books  were  the  writings  of  William  Morris) . 
A  combative  temperament,  which  irresistibly 
drove  me  to  action  for  the  reaUsation  of  the  ideals 
thus  conceived;  a  desire  for  authority,  responsi- 
bility and  command,  which  still  more  intimately 
linked  up  my  will  and  my  ambition  with  the 
social  movements  towards  which  my  combative 
instincts  had  driven  me. 

These  impulses,  good  or  bad,  are  still  mine. 
But  the  war  has  considerably  changed  the  direc- 
tion and  aim  of  the  will  in  which  they  resulted. 


II 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  THE      INTERNATIONALE 

There  is  no  stir,  or  walking  in  the  streets, 
And  the  complexion  of  the  element 
In  favour's  like  the  work  we  have  in  hand, 
Most  bloody,  fiery,  and  most  terrible. 

SiLAKESPEABB,  JuUus  Ccesar,  I,  3. 

On  the  1st  of  August,  1914,  I  witnessed  the 
mobilisation  in  Brussels  at  dawn,  and  in  Paris 
that  same  afternoon.  The  memory  of  that  after- 
noon remains  particularly  vivid  in  my  mind. 
The  weather  was  hot  and  sultry,  there  was  not  a 
breath  of  air,  nature  itself  seemed  to  be  waiting 
in  suspense.  Huge  clouds  of  a  lurid  sulphurous 
colour  threatened  thunder,  which  never  came. 
Shortly  after  noon,  they  so  darkened  part  of  the 
sky  that  they  gave  the  light  a  crepuscular  gloom, 
which  cast  an  imcanny  opalescent  reflection  on 
the  faces  of  the  crowd.  Men  and  women  walked 
about  almost  in  silence  with  the  ghostlike  detach- 
ment of  people  who  have  suddenly  lost  their  own 
volition  and  henceforth  obey  the  will  of  a  fate 
which  they  do  not  understand,  but  the  hostility 
of  which  is  brought  home  to  them  by  everything 
around  them.  A  slight,  but  insistent  and  nause- 
ous smell,  the  breath  of  a  great  overcrowded  city 
in  the  hot,  still  air,  permeated  the  atmosphere. 


24     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

as  though  stealing  up  from  some  vast  hidden 
putrefaction.  Everybody  seemed  to  be  labour- 
ing under  the  sensation  that,  although  people 
were  quiet  and  behaved  normally,  the  visible 
world  was  no  longer  the  real  world.  There  was 
a  great  invisible  Presence,  boding  unimaginable 
suffering,  that  controlled  the  most  trivial  word 
and  the  most  ordinary  gesture. 

I  remember  most  distinctly  how  acutely  I  felt 
this  when  I  was  sitting  down  to  supper,  on  the 
evening  of  the  first  of  August  in  the  stuffy  back- 
room of  a  little  Paris  restaurant,  with  Renaudel, 
Cachin,  and  a  couple  of  other  French  Sociahsts, 
together  with  Hermann  Miiller,  the  delegate 
of  the  German  Social-Democrats,  and  Camille 
Huysmans,  the  secretary  of  the  International 
Socialist  Bureau.  After  the  strain  of  a  long 
meetings  which  was  to  be  resumed  after  supper, 
we  talked  detachedly  and  almost  jokingly  about 
indifferent  things.  We  were  trying  to  forget 
what  had  brought  us  together,  and  that  Jean 
Jaures,  the  gigantic  mind  and  will  whom  we  had 
looked  up  to  as  the  only  power  that  might  still 
have  averted  the  catastrophe,  had  been  shot  dead 
the  evening  before,  after  supping  like  we  were 
in  a  little  Paris  restaurant  and  talking  good- 
humouredly  to  his  friends.  The  drawn,  pale 
face  and  the  tired  suffering  eyes  of  Renaudel, 
whose  devotion  to  Jaures  was  dog-like,  suddenly 
struck  me  again  and  belied  the  reahty  of  any- 


THE    "INTERNATIONALE"        25 

thing  he  said,  of  anything  he  might  even  have 
thought  at  that  time,  as  we  sat  talking  about 
things  that  might  have  mattered  two  days  earlier, 
but  that  did  not  matter  any  more.  My  mind 
then  saw  Jaures  as  I  had  seen  him  three  days 
before  at  the  historic  international  mass  meeting 
in  Brussels.  I  had  shuddered  then  when  I  heard 
him,  at  the  climax  of  his  almost  superhuman  elo- 
quence, conjure  up  the  vision  of  two  loving 
young  human  beings  walking  together  in  the 
evening  gloom,  unsuspicious  of  the  menace  of 
death  which  was  already  hanging  over  them  like 
a  vast  thundercloud.  We  were  now  all  in  the 
shadow  of  that  cloud. 

Again  the  only  real  thing  seemed  to  be  that 
peculiar  smell,  which  I  shall  always  associate 
with  the  memory  of  mobiUsation,  for  the  odour 
of  the  stifling  city  was  blended  with  the  sour 
stench  of  barracks,  coming  from  old  cloth  stored 
in  close  places,  and  leather  greased  long  ago.  It 
reminded  one  of  the  savage  perfimie'  of  some 
feline  beast,  and  seemed  to  call  forth  by  asso- 
ciation the  ancestral,  almost  forgotten  killing  in- 
stincts of  men.  It  was  now  carried  about  every- 
where by  the  men  who  were  being  claimed  again 
by  the  barracks  and  the  camps,  and  who  filled 
the  streets,  the  public  places,  the  cars  and  trains 
with  their  gaily  coloured,  but  weary  figures. 

The  acuteness  of  these  impressions  was  mainly 
owing  to  the  overexcitement  of  one's  fatigued 


26    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

nerves.  To  this  was  due  one's  painful  supersen- 
sitiveness,  the  hysterically  hilarious  twist  of  the 
mouth,  the  vacant  stare  which  I  have  since  so 
often  seen  on  the  faces  of  soldiers  under  the  cloud 
of  death  that  was  then  lowering. 

The  strain  of  my  work  during  those  last  days 
of  July  might  indeed  have  accounted  for  tired 
nerves.  I  had  taken  part  in  the  last  attempts  of 
the  "Internationale,"  whose  seat  was  in  Brussels, 
to  prevent  a  European  war.  An  endeavour  to 
hold  a  meeting  of  the  International  Socialist 
Young  People's  Federation,  one  of  the  bodies 
that  were  in  the  best  position  to  act,  and  of  which 
I  was  president,  was  frustrated  at  the  last 
moment  because  the  Austrians,  represented  by 
Danneberg,  and  the  Germans,  represented  by 
Karl  Liebknecht,  could  not  find  means  to  leave 
their  country.  But  the  International  Socialist 
Bureau  met  at  Brussels  on  July  26th,  27th  and 
28th,  in  the  reading-room  of  the  Workers'  Edu- 
cation Institute,  of  which  I  was  then  the  director. 
Along  with  Camille  Huysmans,  I  acted  as  an 
interpreter.  As  French,  German  and  English 
were  used,  every  speech  had  to  be  translated  into 
two  languages,  a  procedure  even  more  tiring  for 
the  interpreter  than  tiresome  for  the  audience. 
It  was  one  of  the  best-spirited  meetings  of  the 
International  Socialist  Bureau  which  I  ever  at- 
tended. The  goodwill  of  the  representatives 
of  the  great  labour  organisations  of  Europe  to 


THE   "INTERNATIONALE"       27 

attempt  anything  that  might  still  be  attempted 
to  prevent  a  general  conflagration  was  evident. 
The  personal  relations  amongst  delegates  of  dif- 
ferent nations  were  excellent.  I  can  still  see  the 
German  Haase,  with  his  hand  on  Jaures'  shoul- 
der, bent  with  him  over  the  draft  of  a  resolution 
which  they  were  going  to  move  together,  and 
which  was  to  be  a  last  joint  appeal  to  the  labour 
organisations  of  all  countries,  to  bring  the  full 
pressure  of  their  power  to  bear  upon  their  gov- 
ernments. Two  days  later,  Jaures  was  assas- 
sinated. Six  days  later,  before  a  Reichstag 
delirious  with  warlike  enthusiasm,  after  having 
listened  to  the  Chancellor's  announcement  of  the 
invasion  of  Belgium,  Haase  read  the  famous 
statement  of  the  Social-Democratic  Party  in 
favour  of  the  war  credits.  Little  did  we  suspect 
on  the  28th,.  how  quickly  and  thoroughly  the 
Internationale  of  Labour  was  to  be  disrupted 
by  bloodshed  and  treason. 

Yet  the  very  goodwill  and  brotherly  spirit  of 
this  meeting  made  it  all  the  more  evident  that  its 
impotence  to  originate  any  real  action  was  due 
to  an  inherent  vice  of  the  Internationale  itself 
and  not  to  any  personal  shortcomings  of  its 
leaders. 

The  International  Socialist  and  Labour  Con- 
gresses, and  the  International  Socialist  Bureau 
that  was  their  executive  organ,  had  never  been 
more  than  federative  bodies,  linking  up  autono- 


28    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

mous  national  organisations  for  purposes  of  mu- 
tual help  and  information.  This  so-called  Sec- 
ond Internationale,  whose  origin  dates  back  to 
1889,  was  very  different  from  the  first  Interna- 
tionale, which  existed  from  1864.  till  1872.  The 
latter  was  a  real  fighting  organisation  with  a 
central  direction,  and  with  a  leader — Karl  Marx 
— directing  the  activity  of  its  national  sections. 
It  could  thus  be  centraUsed,  for  at  that  time  the 
socialist  movement  was  still  in  its  propagandist 
stage.  In  no  country  had  it  attained  sufficient 
power  to  form  a  constant  and  responsible  ele- 
ment of  national  life.  It  mostly  consisted  of  de- 
bating clubs,  more  or  less  sectarian  societies  for 
propaganda,  or  organisations  for  the  promotion 
and  conduct  of  sporadic  and  short-hved  strikes. 
Such  a  movement  might  well  receive  its  inspira- 
tion from  the  unique  international  centre  by 
whose  propaganda  it  had  in  fact  been  created. 

The  Second  Internationale,  however,  corre- 
sponded to  a  quite  different  stage  of  develop- 
ment. It  arose  from  the  desire  of  national  or- 
ganisations, which  after  the  Franco-Prussian 
War  had  sprung  up  and  attained  a  certain 
amount  of  influence  in  most  European  countries, 
to  get  in  touch  with  each  other.  The  direction 
of  its  development  was  centripetal,  whilst  that 
of  the  first  Internationale  had  been  centrifugal. 
And  when,  after  a  few  years,  the  Second  Inter- 
nationale had  attained  a  certain  degree  of  cohe- 


THE    '^INTERNATIONALE"       29 

sion,  this  was  found  to  be  much  less  strong  than 
the  cohesion  of  labour  unions  or  socialist  parties 
of  a  particular  country  with  their  own  national 
environment.  It  had  been  easy  enough  for  the 
early  agitators  to  conduct  their  propaganda 
along  the  lines  of  a  cosmopolitan  doctrine,  but  it 
was  quite  another  matter  to  adapt  this  doctrine 
to  different  national  conditions,  for  this  meant  to 
organise,  to  gain  a  permanent  influence  on  the 
settlement  of  labour  conditions,  on  the  legislation 
and  administration  of  a  country,  and  to  accept, 
in  some  way  or  another,  a  gradually  growing 
amount  of  responsibility  in  the  conduct  of  that 
country's  public  business. 

Thus  the  Labour  Unions  and  political  parties 
which  formed  the  Second  Internationale,  had  to 
adapt  themselves  to  the  peculiar  spirit  of  the  im 
stitutions  and  the  public  mind  of  their  respective 
countries,  and  even,  to  accept  a  certain  amount  of 
national  sohdarity  with  their  ruling  powers.  The 
more  national  movements  thus  increased  their 
strength  and  influence  in  their  own  sphere,  the 
less  were  they  prepared  to  receive  directions 
from  abroad.  This  explains  why,  in  great  Euro- 
pean countries  with  a  powerful  labour  movement, 
like  England  or  Germany,  the  Internationale 
was  of  httle  practical  account,  whilst  in  coun- 
tries where  the  movement  was  still  in  its  sectarian 
or  propagandist  stage,  like  Russia  or  the  Balkan 
states,  its  resolutions  were  still  an  article  of  faith 


30    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

and  a  subject  of  exegesis.  The  Second  Interna- 
tionale, moreover,  practically  always  respected 
the  national  autonomy  of  the  affiliated  organisa- 
tions and  never  tried  to  become  more  than  an  or- 
ganism for  mutual  information,  voluntary  assist- 
ance and  free  coordination.  Its  leaders  kaew  too 
well  that  it  was  not  equipped  for  action  beyond 
that  programme.  Unfortunately,  however,  they 
acted  towards  the  outside  world  as  though  it 
were  so  equipped  and  thus  created  expectations 
amongst  the  masses  which  they  were  unable  to 
fulfil  when  the  test  of  action  came.  This  may  be 
explained  either  by  the  natural  propensity  of  the 
leaders  of  the  International  Bureau  to  put  this 
organisation  in  the  limelight  and  inflate  its  im- 
portance, or  by  the  equally  natural  desire  of  the 
national  movements  to  augment  their  influence 
at  home  by  adding  to  their  actual  strength  the 
prestige  of  a  powerful  international  organisation 
always  ready  to  back  them.  Anyway,  there  had 
been  of  late  years  a  fatal  disposition  to  create  the 
impression,  especially  as  regards  the  prevention 
of  war,  that  the  Internationale  as  a  body  would 
be  capable  of  decisive  action.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  very  little  attention  was  paid  to  examining 
the  concrete  conditions  of  such  action,  whilst  all 
efforts  were  concentrated  on  the  demonstrative 
effect  of  the  announcements  that  were  to  make  it 
appear  probable.  Hence  the  habit,  which  had  of 
late  become  a  tradition  at  International  confer- 


THE    "INTERNATIONALE"       31 

ences,  to  escape  the  discussion  of  profound  dis- 
agreements which  would  have  made  the  choice  of 
common  tactics  impossible,  and  mask  their  exist- 
ence by  the  concoction  and  mostly  unanimous 
adoption  of  vague  but  lengthy  resolutions. 

It  is  not  because  it  could  not  prevent  war,  but 
because  after  letting  the  world  believe  that  it 
would  do  so,  it  proved  unable  even  to  attempt  it, 
that  one  may  speak  not  only  of  the  failure,  but  of 
the  moral  bankruptcy  of  the  Second  Interna- 
tionale. 

It  was  so  evident  that  its  executive  bodies  had 
no  real  power  whatever  to  throw  into  the  balance 
of  peace  and  war,  for  lack  of  constitutional  means 
of  coercion  of  the  affihated  organisations,  that 
the  possibiHty  of  international  action,  beyond  the 
issuing  of  a  manifesto,  was  not  even  discussed  at 
the  July  conference.  The  manifesto  itself  could 
be  no  more  than  an  appeal  to  the  national  organ- 
isations to  do  their  duty  in  their  respective  coun- 
tries, with  the  means  which  they  would  see  fit 
to  use. 

I  could  not  help  being  struck,  at  this  confer- 
ence, with  the  pitiful  attitude  of  the  Austrian  and 
Bohemian  delegates,  whose  country  at  that  time 
was  forcing  on  the  war  against  Serbia.  Espe- 
cially the  late  Victor  Adler,  the  leader  of  the 
German  Austrians,  and  the  Bohemian  delegates, 
Nemec  and  Soukup,  seemed  almost  physically 
prostrated.     I  remember  hearing  Nemec  com- 


32     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

plaining  most  discouragingly  about  what  he 
called  the  physical  impossibihty  for  the  socialists 
to  do  anything  once  mobilisation  had  been  de- 
clared. In  old  happy-go-lucky  Austria,  whose 
government  Victor  Adler  himself  had  once  de- 
scribed as  "despotism,  tempered  by  slovenliness," 
people  had  been  used,  even  amidst  the  turmoil 
of  the  most  violent  racial  and  political  strife, 
to  a  certain  almost  immoral  "Gemiitlichkeit,"  the 
result  of  which  was  that  nobody  ever  seemed  to 
take  anything  seriously.  But  a  serious  thing  had 
happened  at  last — war.  The  government,  which 
was  always  on  the  verge  of  crumbling  to  pieces, 
had  all  of  a  sudden  become  a  power  that  disposed 
of  the  life  and  property  of  all  its  citizens.  Even 
the  most  radical  elements  were  struck  with 
amazement  and  awe  when  they  saw  how  the  huge 
cruel  machinery  of  mobilisation  began  to  move. 
Nemec,  the  old  leader  of  the  Bohemian  sociaUsts, 
seemed  actually  to  be  struck  with  physical  terror. 
I  remember  how,  for  some  unexplained  reason, 
he  kept  lamenting  about  the  fact  that  the  horses 
and  vans  of  the  transport  service  of  their  daily 
paper,  Pravo  Lidu,  had  been  requisitioned  by  the 
army,  as  though  this  particular  circumstance 
were  any  worse  than  the  suspension  of  all  con- 
stitutional liberties  by  the  state  of  siege.  I  think 
he  told  me  this  story  about  four  times,  with  such 
evident  signs  of  discouragement  that  as  far  as 
he  was  concerned  this  incident  did  obviously  away 


THE    "INTERNATIONALE"        33 

with  any  inclination  to  oppose  the  Government's 
policy.  In  the  hght  of  subsequent  events,  I  have 
often  remembered  this,  and  especially  after  the 
attitude  of  the  German  and  Austrian  Social- 
Democrats  had  set  me  thinking  that  lack  of  indi- 
vidual courage  might  be  one  of  the  main  causes 
of  their  passive  attitude.  The  mere  fact  of  the 
destruction  of  the  party  machine  by  the  mobil- 
isation must  have  appeared  to  these  men,  who 
relied  on  the  material  strength  of  their  organi- 
sation rather  than  on  the  revolutionary  spirit  of 
their  membership,  as  the  annihilation  of  all  power 
and  therefore  as  an  excuse  for  non-resistance. 
Four  years  later,  the  same  psychological  disposi- 
tion of  the  German  people  was  to  account  for 
their  sudden  acquiescence  in  defeat  once  the  mil- 
itary machine  had  run  down. 

The  last  attempt  to  coordinate  the  action  of  the 
socialist  parties,  before  the  final  breakdown  of 
all  relations,  was  Hermann  Muller's  journey  to 
Paris  on  August  1st,  with  Camille  Huysmans 
and  myself. 

When  I  got  up  that  morning,  I  little  expected 
that  I  should  be  in  Paris  in  the  afternoon.  I  felt 
so  tired  after  the  hard  work  of  the  previous  days, 
that  I  had  made  up  my  mind  to  take  a  day's  com- 
plete rest.  I  was  to  go  fishing  in  the  country, 
my  usual  way  of  relieving  tired  nerves.  Besides, 
I  felt  that  there  were  some  more  terrible  days 
ahead,  and  I  wanted  a  day's  isolation  to  let  my 


34.    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

thoughts  settle  down  a  bit  and  make  myself  in- 
tellectually fit  for  the  tasks  to  come. 

As  a  consequence  of  the  declaration  of  "danger 
of  war"  in  Germany  the  day  before,  the  general 
mobilisation  of  the  Belgian  army  had  been  an- 
nounced that  night  by  the  sounding  of  church 
bells  and  by  bugle  calls  in  the  streets  soon  after 
midnight.  I  found  it  easy  to  get  up  at  dawn,  for 
there  was  little  sleep  to  be  had  any  way.  In  the 
streets  and  on  the  trolley-car  that  was  to  take  me 
to  the  railroad  station  I  must  have  cut  a  funny 
figure,  with  my  sporting  attire,  rod  and  basket, 
standing  like  a  phantom  of  bygone  peaceful 
times  amongst  the  crowds  of  reservists  who  were 
hastening  towards  the  camps  and  barracks.  Yet 
I  was  determined  to  have  my  day's  rest,  and  I 
was  in  the  habit  of  sticking  to  that  purpose  in 
spite  of  everything  once  I  had  resolved  it  to  be 
necessary.  But  at  the  station  I  learned  from  the 
newspapers  that  Jean  Jaures  had  been  murdered 
in  Paris  the  night  before.  I  immediately  de- 
cided to  return  home.  I  felt  that  the  time  was 
over  when  one  could  rest  and  think  and  live  as 
before.  I  realised  instinctively  that  now  the 
great  hostile  Fate  which  so  far  had  only  been  a 
menace,  had  struck  mankind.  There  was  to  be 
no  more  individual  wilhng,  we  were  all  to  be 
thrown  into  the  whirlpool  of  the  great  Madness. 
Now  the  first  blood  had  flowed,  the  spell  of  sus- 
pense was  broken. 


THE    "INTERNATIONALE"       35 

Objectively  speaking,  the  coincidence  of  the 
assassination  of  Jaures  with  the  other  interna- 
tional events  may  have  been  an  accident.  Up  to 
now,  it  is  not  known  whether  his  murderer  was 
the  instrument  of  a  French  jingo  plot,  of  a  Ger- 
man intrigue  or  of  some  machination  of  Czarism, 
to  which  Jaures'  insistence  on  a  purely  defensive 
pohcy  was  disagreeable.  Perhaps  he  was  simply 
a  weak-headed  man  driven  to  insanity  by  the 
chauvinist  press.  But  whether  the  crime  was  due 
to  purpose  or  chance,  later  events  made  it  ap- 
pear, what  intuition  at  the  time  had  made  me  feel 
it  to  be.  The  deadly  shot  that  rang  out  in  the  rue 
du  Croissant  that  Friday  night  was  to  call  forth 
a  thundering  echo  all  over  the  world,  and  arouse 
the  Beast  of  War. 

The  diary  of  my  wife,  to  whom  I  told  the  news 
immediately  on  my  return  home,  and  who  re- 
ceived it  with  tears — not  the  last  tears  she  was  to 
weep  these  four  years — bears  witness  that  she 
had  the  same  intuition.  The  murder  of  him  who 
was  certainly  the  greatest  individual  power  ar- 
rayed against  war  was  a  symbolic  blow.  The 
last  chance  of  peace  had  gone. 

Soon  afterwards  I  received  a  call  from  Camille 
Huysmans,  who  asked  me  to  accompany  him  to 
Paris  with  Hermann  Miiller,  the  secretary  of  the 
German  Social-Democratic  Party,  who  had  un- 
expectedly arrived  in  Brussels  that  morning. 
Miiller,  whom  I  had  known  for  years,  had  been 


36     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

delegated  by  the  Executive  of  his  party  to  get 
in  touch  with  the  French  Sociahsts  and  labour 
leaders  and  report  himself  back  in  Berlin  before 
the  meeting  of  the  Reichstag  that  was  to  be  held 
on  Tuesday,  the  4th.  We  decided  that,  if  there 
were  the  least  chance  of  a  delay  on  his  return 
journey,  I  should  also  go  to  Berlin,  if  necessary 
by  Switzerland,  whilst  Miiller  would  travel  back 
by  Belgium  or  Holland,  so  that  there  would  be 
two  chances  of  reaching  Berlin.  I  am  glad  that 
this  proved  unnecessary  and  that  Miiller  found  it 
comparatively  easy  to  get  back  in  time — in  fact, 
he  was  in  Berlin  on  Monday — for  otherwise  I 
should  probably  have  spent  the  duration  of  the 
war  in  a  German  internment  camp. 

Contradictory  accounts  of  Miiller's  mission 
have  been  published  since.  German  and  pro- 
German  papers  have  accused  the  French  Social- 
ists of  having  received  Miiller  with  demonstra- 
tions of  national  hatred,  and  not  even  treated  him 
fairly  in  their  personal  relations.  On  the  other 
side,  Miiller  has  been  represented  as  having  tried 
to  induce  the  French  Sociahsts  to  vote  against 
the  war  credits  under  the  false  pretence  that  the 
German  Social-Democrats  were  going  to  act  in 
the  same  way,  this  abominable  treachery  being 
part  of  a  plan  of  German  imperialism  to  disor- 
ganise resistance  abroad. 

Both  versions  are  untrue.  As.  I  remained  with' 
Miiller  all  the  time  he  spent  in  Paris,  and  inter- 


THE    "IlSrTERNATIONALE"       37 

preted  everything  that  was  said  at  the  two 
conferences  we  had  there,  I  can  vouch  for  the 
correctness  of  the  following  account. 

Immediately  after  our  arrival,  Miiller  was  re- 
ceived by  the  leaders  of  the  French  Sociahst 
party.  We  first  met  in  a  room  of  the  Chamber 
of  Deputies,  and  after  adjournment  for  supper, 
in  the  office  of  the  paper  VHumanite.  The  re- 
ception Miiller  was  given,  both  officially  and  per- 
sonally, was  as  cordial  as  could  be. 

Miiller  began  by  declaring  that  he  had  been 
sent  for  the  purpose  of  mutual  information.  The 
executive  of  the  German  Social-Democratic 
party  wanted  to  inform  the  French  Sociahst s 
of  the  real  state  of  affairs  in  Germany,  and  at 
the  same  time  gather  information  about  the 
probable  attitude  of  the  French  Sociahst  depu- 
ties on  the  vote  of  the  war  credits.  This  was  in 
view  of  the  meeting  of  the  Social-Democratic 
members  of  the  Reichstag  which  was  to  precede 
the  full  meeting  of  the  House  on  Tuesday,  the 
4th. 

Miiller  laid  much  stress  on  the  fact  that  he 
could  not  officially  commit  his  party,  for  neither 
the  executive  committee  nor  the  members  of  the 
Reichstag  had  met  since  the  situation  had  be- 
come critical.  He  could  not  give  any  informa- 
tion about  what  might  have  happened  in  Ger- 
many since  Friday  morning,  when  he  had  left 
BerUn.    Yet  he  warned  us  against  a  too  pessi- 


38    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

mistic  interpretation  of  the  attitude  of  the  im- 
perial government;  he  said  that  the  "state  of 
danger  of  war"  was  a  comparatively  harmless 
step,  and  much  less  far-reaching  than  general 
mobilisation.  He  added  that  he  Imew  nothing 
of  the  mobilisation  of  the  German  army,  the 
rumour  of  which  had  reached  Paris  that  morning. 
As  Haase  had  done  in  Brussels  three  days  be- 
fore, he  insisted  on  the  importance  of  the  recent 
so^ciahst  peace  demonstrations  in  Berlin,  and 
gave  us  to  understand  that  the  government,  or  at 
least  the  Imperial  Chancellor,  had  viewed  them 
with  sympathy,  and  on  the  whole  seemed  rather 
inclined  to  encourage  the  anti-war  demonstra- 
tions of  the  Social-Democrats. 

I  am  to  this  day  convinced  that  Miiller  and 
Haase  both  showed  genuine  candour  in  taking 
the  "friendhness"  of  the  Chancellor  for  granted. 
This  judgment  is  based  not  only  on  my  knowl- 
edge of  the  personal  character  of  these  two  men, 
but  on  my  opinion  that  excessive  creduUty 
towards  the  government  was  indeed  character- 
istic of  the  state  of  mind  of  the  German  Social- 
Democrats  in  those  days.  It  is  hardly  necessary 
to  say  that  this  in  my  opinion  is  no  excuse,  for 
lack  of  discernment  coupled  with  lack  of  cour- 
age would  be  anything  but  an  extenuating  cir- 
cumstance. 

When  seeking  a  psj^chological  ex:planation, 
however,  one  should  keep  in  mind  that  the  Ger- 


THE    "INTERNATIONALE"       39 

man  Social-Democrats  were  used  to  being  treated 
like  dogs  by  the  ruling  powers.  They  were  sys- 
tematically kept  out  of  all  responsible  positions, 
whether  in  the  imperial  or  the  local  government. 
There  were  no  social  relations  of  any  descrip- 
tion between  the  Social-Democrats  and  the 
representatives  of  the  ruHng  classes.  It  was 
notorious,  for  instance,  that  a  Social-Democrat 
belonging  to  the  bourgeoisie  could  not  marry  a 
woman  of  his  class,  unless  she  were  a  foreigner 
or  a  Jewess — that  is  to  say,  another  social  outlaw. 
So  when  suddenly  the  Social-Democratic  leaders 
found  that  they  were  no  longer  bullied,  and  that 
even  the  Imperial  Chancellor  graciously  conde- 
scended to  talk  to  them  and,  seemingly  taking 
them  in  his  confidence,  gave  them  to  understand 
that  he  considered  them  as  partners  in  his  game, 
they  could  not  help  feeling  flattered.  People 
such  as  these  were  naturally  incUned  to  beUeve 
things  which  favoured  the  sense  of  their  own 
importance.  This  is,  probably,  the  main  reason 
why  the  Social-Democratic  leaders  genuinely 
believed  that  the  Chancellor,  and  apparently  the 
Kaiser,  too,  were  trying,  with  their  assistance,  to 
maintain  peace. 

I  never  had  any  doubt  that  Miiller  was  equally 
sincere  when  he  represented  his  party  as  pre- 
pared to  vote  against  the  war  credits.  He  said 
that  in  no  case  did  they  intend  to  vote  for  them. 
"Dass  man  fiir  die  Kriegskredite  stimmt,  das 


40    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

halte  ich  fiir  ausgeschlossen,"  were  his  own 
words.  There  were  only  two  appreciable  cur- 
rents of  opinion  amongst  the  leaders  of  his  party, 
those  in  favour  of  voting  against  the  war  credits, 
and  those  who  advocated  abstention  from  voting. 
The  latter,  however,  seemed  to  him  to  be  a 
minority. 

During  the  discussion  a  French  Socialist  dep- 
uty asked  what  would  happen  if  one  of  the  coun- 
tries involved  in  the  conflict  were  invaded  by 
surprise.  Would  there  not  tlien  be  a  case  of  self- 
defence  that  would  justify  the  vote  of  the  war 
credits  in  the  country  thus  attacked? 

Miiller  answered  that  he  thought  this  hypothe- 
sis highly  improbable.  He  based  his  opinion  on 
the  traditional  view  of  the  German  Social-Dem- 
ocrats, as  often  expressed  by  August  Bebel,  that 
modern  wars  result  from  general  causes  of  eco- 
nomic competition  between  imperialist  powers 
and  that  the  responsibility  for  them  rests  on  the 
ruhng  classes  of  all  countries.  Consequently,  the 
obsolete  distinction  which  some  socialists  still  try 
to  make  between  the  attacking  power  and  the 
attacked  would  most  probably  be  impossible  to 
make  now.  He  added  that  the  Franco-Prussian 
War  of  1870-71  had  shown  how  easy  it  is  for 
the  governments  on  both  sides  to  represent  the 
enemy  as  the  attacking  power,  whilst  the  truth 
about  diplomatic  events  usually  does  not  become 
known  until  all  is  over.    Nevertheless,  Miiller 


THE    ''INTERNATIONALE"       41 

said  that  should,  for  instance,  Russian  Cossacks 
undertake  a  surprise  attack  on  Eastern  Germany 
without  any  provocation  on  the  German  side, 
there  would  probably  be  made  out  a  case  of  self- 
defence  that  would  compel  the  German  Social- 
Democrats  to  allow  their  government  the  neces- 
sary means  to  repulse  the  invasion.  We  should 
not,  however,  base  our  probable  policy,  he  con- 
cluded, on  a  hypothesis  of  this  sort,  but  rather 
on  the  assumption  that  it  would  not  be  possible 
to  make  the  necessary  distinction  between  the 
aggressors  and  the  others.  Therefore  it  would 
be  desirable  for  the  socialists  in  all  countries  to 
adopt  a  uniform  policy. 

It  soon  became  apparent  that  the  French  So- 
ciahsts  at  that  time  were  practically  unanimous 
in  considering  that  the  attitude  of  the  French 
Government  left  no  doubt  as  to  its  intention  to 
maintain  peace,  and,  if  it  should  come  to  the 
worst,  to  remain  on  the  defensive.  Miiller  was 
given  numerous  facts  to  prove  this.  Renaudel 
told  him  how  Jaures  successfully  endeavoured  to 
make  the  French  Cabinet  influence  Russia  in  a 
sense  favourable  to  the  peaceful  solution  of  the 
Austro-Serbian  conflict.  Reference  was  also 
made  to  the  fact,  which  has  since  provoked  a  good 
deal  of  comment,  that  by  order  of  the  govern- 
ment the  French  troops  were  being  withdrawn 
to  a  distance  of  several  miles  from  the  frontier, 
as  an  evidence  of  their  defensive  intentions  and 


42    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

wish  to  avoid  provocation.  So  it  seemed  un- 
likely that  France  should  play  any  other  part 
than  of  an  attacked  country,  therefore  the 
French  Sociahsts  did  not  contemplate  voting 
against  the  war  credits.  Part  of  them,  however, 
might  favour  abstention,  to  demonstrate  their 
refusal  to  accept  any  responsibility  for  the  con- 
sequences of  a  system  of  competitive  armaments 
which  they  had  always  opposed.  The  conclu- 
sion, as  drawn  by  the  chairman  of  the  confer- 
ence, was  that  abstention  from  voting  in  every 
country  was  the  only  means  by  which  the  Social- 
ists could  maintain  a  uniform  attitude  towards 
the  war  credits,  if  circumstances  at  the  time  of 
the  vote  made  such  uniformity  appear  desirable. 
As  Miiller  had  no  authority  to  give  or  accept  any 
pledges,  it  remained  well  understood  that  both 
sociahst  parties  would  act  as  they  thought  fit,  in 
the  light  of  the  "mutual  information"  resulting 
from  Miiller's  journey. 

The  effect  of  Miiller's  statements  could  only 
be  an  inducement  for  the  French  Socialists  to 
rely  on  the  influence  of  the  German  Social-Dem- 
ocrats with  the  imperial  government,  and  to  re- 
fuse the  vote  of  the  war  credits  or  at  least  abstain 
from  voting  for  them.  This  purpose  fitted  so 
well  into  the  general  plan  of  Germany  to  disor- 
ganise and  demorahse  her  opponents  whilst  she 
was  herself  collecting  all  her  forces  for  a  supreme 
blow,  that  the  suspicion  that  Miiller  had  acted  as 


THE    "INTERNATIONALE"        43 

the  tool  of  the  government  or  of  a  party  abeady 
an  accomplice  to  it,  arose  quite  naturally.  I  dare- 
say, at  that  time,  none  of  the  French  SociaHsts 
who  heard  Miiller  felt  any  doubt  about  the  hon- 
esty of  his  purpose.  But  when  a  few  months 
later  the  facts  of  the  case  became  public  as  a  con- 
sequence of  an  indiscretion  from  the  German 
side,  things  were  viewed  in  a  different  light.  In 
spite  of  all  appearances,  I  am  still  convinced 
there  was  never  any  foul  play  intended.  I  admit 
I  may  err  in  my  belief  that  Miiller  was  too  hon- 
est a  man  to  have  lent  himself  to  such  despicable 
felony,  and  that  the  party  executive  which  sent 
him  was,  to  my  knowledge,  not  clever  enough  to 
conceive  it.  This  is  a  matter  of  purely  personal 
judgment.  But  there  are  facts  to  show  that  the 
views  expressed  by  Miiller  on  the  1st  of  August 
were  identical  with  those  held  by  the  leaders  of 
German  Social-Democracy,  at  least  up  to  the 
time  when  he  left  Berlin.  They  were  quite  in 
the  line  of  the  party  traditions  for  several  years. 
The  change  that  made  the  Social  Democrats  act 
in  an  entirely  different  way  three  days  later  oc- 
curred during  those  critical  days  between  Miil- 
ler's  departure  from.  Berlin  on  the  30th  of  July 
and  his  return  on  the  3rd  of  August. 

Some  of  my  friends  think  I  should  not  be  sim- 
ple enough  to  believe  that  a  German  may  be  any- 
thing but  a  scoundrel,  and  that  it  is  a  mistaken 
sense  of  fairness  to  accept  the  possibility  of  any 


M    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

hypothesis  that  may  be  used  as  an  excuse  for  the 
attitude  of  German  Social-Democracy.  Yet  I 
persist  in  my  judgment.  I  also  think  that  it 
provides  no  excuse  whatever  for  the  German 
socialists.  The  matter  with  Germany  was  some- 
thing far  worse,  as  I  realised  soon  afterwards, 
than  the  wickedness  of  individual  men;  and  my 
judgment  of  the  failure  of  German  Social-De- 
mocracy would  be  more  lenient  thati  it  is  now, 
were  I  to  admit  that  it  was  sold  by  treacherous 
leaders. 

In  the  same  way  I  should  think  better  than  I 
do  of  the  German  nation  as  a  whole  if  I  believed 
that  the  Kaiser's  responsibility  were  as  colossal 
as  one  would  gather  from  a  study  of  contempo- 
rary history  in  the  "movie"  theatres.  The  more 
we  use  fairness  in  our  judgment  of  individual 
men  and  particular  events  or  circumstances,  the 
more  severe  our  indictment  of  the  system  will  be. 
And  it  is  to  eradicate  that  system  that  we  set  out 
on  a  righteous  war — and  won  it. 

The  story  of  hoW;,  after  an  arduous  and  adven- 
turous journey,  during  which  we  were  arrested 
and  escaped  once,  were  arrested  again,  and  re- 
leased after  being  treated  rather  roughly  by  a 
crowd  at  Maubeuge,  how  we  finally  had  to  cross 
the  Franco-Belgian  frontier  on  foot  under  the 
eye  of  French  gendarmes,  does  not  belong  here. 
We  reached  Brussels  on  Sunday  afternoon,  and 
there  received  the  assurance  that  Miiller  would 


THE    "INTERNATIONALE"        45 

be  back  in  Berlin  in  time.  I  therefore  decided 
not  to  accompany  him  any  fm^ther  and  saw  him 
off  at  the  Brussels  station.  When  we  shook 
hands  on  parting,  the  last  connecting  hnk  be- 
tween the  socialists  of  the  two  groups  of  powers 
was  severed. 

I  had  told  MUller  that  I  would  be  glad  to  act 
again  as  a  Uaison  agent  if  the  war  broke  out  and 
circumstances  made  it  necessary  to  establish  rela- 
tions between  French  and  German  socialists.  For 
I  still  thought  as  a  citizen  of  a  neutral  country.  I 
had  indeed  considered  the  possibility  of  Belgium 
being  dragged  into  the  whirlpool,  but  I  was  too 
absorbed  by  what  was  happening  among  the 
great  Powers  to  devote  much  consideration  to 
what  might  occur  at  home.  I  little  suspected,  on 
my  parting  with  Miiller,  that  three  days  later  I 
should  be  marching  towards  the  front  as  a  rifle- 
man in  a  Belgian  volunteer  brigade. 


Ill 


NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 


When  the  torrent  sweeps  the  man  against  a  boulder,  you  must 
expect  him  to  scream,  and  you  need  not  be  surprised  if  the 
scream  is  sometimes  a  theory. 

R.  L.  Stevenson,  Virginihus  Puerisque. 

On  the  morning  of  the  3rd  of  August,  it  be- 
came known  that  the  Belgian  Government  had 
refused  to  consider  the  proposal  made  by  Berlin 
the  night  before,  for  the  passage  of  the  German 
armies  on  their  march  against  France.  The  in- 
vasion of  Belgium  began  immediately.  I  was 
called  to  arms  for  garrison  duty  as  a  private  in 
the  home  miUtia.  But  I  made  up  my  mind  that 
it  was  my  duty  to  do  the  best  I  could  to  help  my 
country  repulse  the  invasion.  As  I  was  a  good 
marksman  and  a  fair  all-round  athlete,  this 
meant  more  than  what  I  might  do  with  the  mil- 
itia. So  I  decided  to  volunteer  for  service  in  an 
active  infantry  regiment.  I  enlisted  the  same 
afternoon. 

Although  I  believed  at  the  time  that  my  de- 
cision was  the  outcome  of  careful  reflection — and 
in  fact,  I  did  as  much  intensive  and  serious  think- 
ing as  time  and  circumstances  would  permit — I 
realised  later  that  I  had  obeyed  sentiment  rather 
than  thought.    One  may  imagine  he  is  listening 

46 


NINETEEN-FpURTEEN  47 

to  his  intellect  in  a  mental  crisis  like  the  one  I 
went  through  those  days,  but  intellect  itself  does 
nothing  then  but  voice  the  deeper  impulses  of 
instinct  and  temperament.  It  was  not  possible 
to  be  confronted  by  a  situation  so  suddenly  and 
so  fundamentally  different  from  anything  to 
which  my  ideas  were  accustomed,  and  yet  expect 
the  machinery  of  the  mind  to  act  coolly  and 
smoothly  as  if  nothing  had  changed  but  certain 
premises  of  a  logical  process. 

To  most  of  my  countrymen,  as  to  most  French- 
men or  Germans  at  that  time,  this  meant  simply 
to  be  carried  away  by  the  wave  of  patriotism 
that  swept  their  country.  There  was,  however, 
nothing  of  the  sort  in  my  case.  I  both  thought 
and  felt  too  internationally  to  act  like  that ;  I  had 
more  friends  in  the  German  army  than  in  that  of 
my  native  country.  I  was  perfectly  aware — and 
not  only  intellectually,  but  emotionally  aware — 
that  there  was  exactly  the  same  appeal  to  en- 
thusiasm and  action  in  the  patriotic  feelings  of 
the  people  on  either  side  of  the  frontier.  It  did 
not  even  require  imagination  to  tell  me  this.  On 
Saturday,  I  had  witnessed  the  scenes  of  mobil- 
isation in  France,  the  earnest,  silent,  devoted 
answer  of  a  whole  nation  to  the  call  of  duty. 
On  Sunday,  as  I  accompanied  Hermann  Miiller 
to  the  station  at  Brussels,  I  had  been  just  as  im- 
pressed by  the  sight  of  a  couple  of  hundred 
young  Germans  taking  leave  of  their  parents 


48    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

and  friends,  to  obey  the  order  of  mobilisation. 
When  their  train  left  amidst  the  singing  of  patri- 
otic hymns  and  pathetic  shouts'  of  "auf  wieder- 
sehn,"  I  was  equally  struck  with  the  attitude 
of  a  generation  that  was  gladly  going  to  sacrifice 
itself  for  a  cause  in  the  sacredness  of  which  it 
believed.  On  the  two  following  days,  I  was  told 
by  friends  who  had  just  returned  from  Germany, 
that  the  outbreak  of  war,  there  also,  had  created 
an  atmosphere  of  genuine  enthusiasm  and  devo- 
tion to  the  duty  of  what  was  considered  to  be 
national  defence.  I  have  learned  since,  of  course, 
that  very  soon  afterwards,  as  soon  indeed  as  it 
seemed  that  the  victorious  German  armies  were 
going  to  sweep  into  Paris,  these  original  feelings 
became  adulterated  by  brutal  "Siegesfreude" 
and  the  lust  of  conquest  which  the  newly  discov- 
ered knowledge  of  Germany's  military  superior- 
ity called  forth.  But  this  does  not  alter  the  fact 
that  on  the  4th  of  August,  whatever  the  rulers 
and  the  mihtary  caste  may  have  thought,  the 
mass  of  the  German  people  honestly  believed 
that  they  were  about  to  fight  for  their  homes  and 
the  integrity  of  their  fatherland,  and  that  there- 
fore they  were  inspired  by  a  staunch  spirit  of 
patriotic  sacrifice.  That  they  were  misled  does 
not  affect  the  altruistic  nature  of  such  a  popular 
passion,  since  it  leads  to  the  sacrifice  of  individual 
safety  to  a  common  cause.  This  is  probably  why 
its  appeal  to  the  sympathy  of  those  who  witness  it 


NINETEEN-FOURTEEN  49 

is  so  strong  that  to  withstand  it  takes  more  inde- 
pendence of  character  or  capacity  for  cool  analy- 
tical thinking  than  most  people  can  muster.  In 
fact,  most  neutrals  who  lived  in  Germany  in  the 
earlier  stages  of  the  war,  even  amongst  those 
whose  sympathies  would  otherwise  have  been 
with  the  Entente  powers,  went  through  the  same 
experience.  I  have  met  quite  a  few  Americans 
in  1918,  then  rabidly  pro-war,  who  had  lived  in 
Germany  and  remained  there  through  the  earlier 
stages  of  the  war,  and  who  confessed  that  they 
too  had  not  escaped  the  contagion  of  popular 
enthusiasm  in  August,  1914,  and  even  later. 

My  immunity  from  it  derived  from  my 
knowledge  that  this  enthusiasm  existed  on  both 
sides.  Moreover,  I  had  been  for  years  engaged 
in  a  peace  propaganda  which  was  inspired  by  the 
desire  to  avert  such  a  conflict  as  had  then  broken 
out.  And  I  well  knew,  as  did  all  those  who  con- 
ducted this  propaganda,  that  the  creation  of  such 
an  atmosphere  of  popular  enthusiasm  was  an  es- 
sential condition  to  any  warfare  under  the  pre- 
vailing regime  of  parliamentarianism,  control  of 
public  opinion  by  the  press,  and  universal  mili- 
tary service.  No  government  would  have  dared 
to  risk  war  without  having  first  created  this  pop- 
ular feeling,  and  facts  have  proved  that  every 
government  had  at  its  disposal,  directly  or  indi- 
rectly, the  means  to  do  it. 

Yet  there  was  one  element  of  the  popular  feel- 


50    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

ing  in  Belgium  at  the  time  that  made  me  yield 
to  its  natural  appeal  to  sympathy.  It  was  very 
different  from  the  intoxication  of  a  people  with 
the  hope  of  victory.  It  was  a  much  more  exalted 
feeling  than  that  due  to  the  consciousness  that 
Belgium  had  been  forced  into  war  by  the  un- 
provoked attack  of  an  enemy  twenty  times  her 
superior,  with  the  aggravating  circumstance  that 
she  sacrificed  herself  for  the  sake  of  loyalty  to  a 
pledge. 

There  was  a  decisive  impulse  at  last  I  I  felt 
such  an  overmastering  movement  of  repulsion 
against  cowardly  brutahty,  of  active  sympathy 
with  the  victim  of  an  unprovoked  aggression,  of 
instinctive  desire  to  share  the  sacrifice  of  those 
who  willingly  gave  up  everything  for  honour's 
sake,  of  admiration  for  the  little  plucky  one 
against  the  big  brute,  that  I  could  not  doubt  a 
minute  that  this  call  came  from  what  was  good 
and  true  in  me,  and  had  to  be  obeyed.  There 
was  to  be  no  reasoning  here  beyond  ascertaining 
the  fact  that  Belgium  was  not  using  her  refusal 
to  break  her  pledge  of  neutrality  as  a  mask  for 
the  pursuit  of  selfish  interests  or  some  other  un- 
avowed,  unclean  purpose.  And  this  fact  was 
soon  ascertained.  I  could  trust  my  own  judg- 
ment as  to  Belgium's  innocence,  for  if  anybody 
could  have  been  biassed  against  the  Belgian  Gov- 
ernment, whose  internal  and  external  pohcy  I 
had  always  execrated,  it  was  I.     But  no  doubt 


NINETEEN-FOURTEEN  51 

was  possible  here:  all  Belgium's  immediate  inter- 
ests were  for  yielding  to  Germany's  demand  to 
let  her  pass;  honour  alone  was  against  it.  The 
sacrifice  was  too  evident  and  too  grievous  to  al- 
low any  suspicion  as  to  the  purity  of  the  motives 
that  inspired  it. 

To  a  systematically  suspicious  mind,  only  one 
alternative  remained  possible:  Belgium's  refusal 
to  yield  to  the  German  ultimatum  might  have 
been  a  platonic  demonstration  which,  whether 
followed  or  not  by  a  feint  of  mihtary  resistance, 
would  have  safeguarded  her  against  the  suspicion 
on  the  French  and  British  side  of  her  having  been 
Germany's  accomplice,  and  at  the  same  time 
have  allowed  her  to  expect  reparation  from,  and 
reconciliation  with,  a  victorious  Germany,  whose 
plans  of  conquest  would  not  have  been  seriously 
hindered. 

To  entertain  such  a  suspicion  would  have  been, 
as  events  showed  very  soon  afterwards,  unjust 
towards  the  men  who  then  formed  the  govern- 
ment. I  dare  say  that  on  both  sides — the  ruUng 
conservative,  Roman  Cathohc  party  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  progressive,  labour  and  radical 
opposition  on  the  other — there  was  an  equal 
amount  of  pleasant  surprise  in  finding  that  the 
other  party  too  had  acted,  not  on  partisan  mo- 
tives, but  as  men  individually  hurt  in  their 
honour  by  an  insult  to  the  State  of  which  they 
were  citizens. 


52     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

German  diplomacy  had  started  on  its  great 
adventure  imder  evil  auspices  indeed.  By  show- 
ing right  at  the  outset  the  brutality  of  its  pur- 
pose and  the  ruthlessness  of  the  means  which 
it  intended  to  use,  it  managed  to  weld  into  a 
common  attitude  of  desperate  resistance  two 
powers  which  otherwise  it  might  perhaps  have 
tried  successfully  to  keep  neutral  or  even  favour- 
ably disposed:  the  Labour  Party  and  the  Roman 
Cathohcs. 

These  two  antagonistic  powers  —  for  in  Bel- 
gium the  Roman  Catholic  Church  is  essentially 
a  poUtical  power,  identified  with  the  Conserva- 
tive Party — together  represent  practically  the 
whole  nation.  The  Labour  Party — probably 
the  strongest  of  its  kind  in  pre-war  Europe 
— had  always  been  outspokenly  socialistic,  with 
particularly  accentuated  internationalist  and  an- 
timilitarist  sympathies.  The  headquarters  of  the 
Internationale  were  in  Brussels,  so  that  here  the 
Germans  might  have  found  a  natural  channel  to 
influence  labour  and  socialism  the  world  over. 
Belgian  sociahsm  was  traditionally  opposed  to 
any  manifestation  of  attachment  to  the  State,  to 
such  an  extent  that  before  the  war  the  waiving  of 
her  national  flag  or  the  strains  of  the  national 
anthem  would  have  been  taken  as  an  insult  in 
labour  circles.  Although  the  Labour  Party  advo- 
cated general  popular  armament,  it  did  so  more 
to  oppose  the  prevailing  system  of  army  organ- 


NINETEEN-FOURTEEN  53 

isation,  which  was  calculated  to  give  the  ruling 
classes  a  willing  instrument  to  support  their 
domination,  than  to  help  create  a  strong  weapon 
for  national  defence.  To  the  latter  it  paid  in- 
deed little  practical  attention.  Lastly,  the  rela- 
tions between  the  Belgian  Labor  Party  and  the 
German  Social-Democrats  were  particularly  in- 
timate and  cordial,  and  German  socialism  was 
always  looked  up  to  for  guidance,  example  and 
help. 

It  is  true  that  in  the  Walloon  part  of  the  coun- 
try, which  includes  the  main  industrial  districts 
and  socialist  strongholds,  there  was  always  a 
great  admiration  and  love  for  France  and 
French  democratic  ideals.  But  this  might  have 
been  neutralised  by  the  equally  strong  and  nat- 
ural sympathy  of  the  Flemish  for  their  Teutonic 
cousins,and  by  the  general  execration  of  Russian 
Tzarism,  which  was  just  then  being  used  in  Ger- 
many as  a  means  to  induce  the  Social-Democrats 
to  support  the  "holy-war  of  Teutonic  culture 
against  Russian  barbarism."  A  German  diplo- 
mat with  no  more  than  the  ordinary  amount  of 
cunning  might  thus  well  have  been  tempted  to 
use  the  power  of  Belgian  sociaUsm  to  create  an 
atmosphere  of  neutrality  and  moral  isolation 
around  the  enemy. 

The  same  is  true  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Party 
in  Belgium,  to  a  greater  extent  even,  for  here  it 
was  more  than  neutrality,  it  was  sympathy  and 


54     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

moral  support  that  Germany  might  have  ex- 
pected if  she  had  laid  her  plans  more  shrewdly. 
Here  she  might  have  relied  on  the  instinctive 
solidarity  of  purpose  between  the  supporters  of 
the  principle  of  centraUsed  and  autocratic  au- 
thority in  ecclesiastical  and  moral  matters,  as 
represented  by  the  Roman  Church,  and  the 
censer-bearers  of  political  despotism,  as  repre- 
sented by  the  Kaiser.  The  subsequent  attitude 
of  many  dignitaries  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  in  neutral  countries  and  in  Italy,  Ire- 
land and  South  America,  has  been  significant 
enough  in  this  respect.  Kaiserism  and  Popery 
were  the  alhed  crusaders  of  feudalism,  temporal 
and  spiritual.  That  the  rulers  of  Germany 
were  aware  of  this  natural  sympathy  is  evi- 
denced by  an  utterance  of  Kaiser  Wilhelm  him- 
self in  the  first  year  of  the  war^  which  was  duly 
reported  to  the  Belgian  Government  at  the  time. 
The  Kaiser,  whilst  on  a  tour  along  the  Western 
front  and  through  occupied  Belgium,  paid  a  visit 
to  the  famous  Abbey  of  Benedictine  monks  at 
Maredsous.  He  had  a  talk  with  the  Prior,  who 
happens  to  be  a  celebrated  scholar,  one  of  the 
most  authorised  representatives  of  Cathohcism 
in  Belgium.  The  Kaiser  imbosomed  himself  to 
him  by  complaining  bitterly  about  the  lack  of 
understanding  and  sympathy  the  Belgian  Catho- 
lics had  shown  him.  "And'yet,"  he  said,  "do  we 
not  all  stand  for  the  maintenance  of  the  same 


NINETEEN-FOURTEEN  55 

principle,  authority?     Is  it  not  a  pity  that  we 
have  been  divided?" 

Apart  from  these  general  reasons,  there  are 
other  motives  which  might  have  made  it  worth 
while  for  Germany  to  try  to  win  the  support  of 
the  Belgian  CathoUcs.  They  looked  up  to  the 
"Centrum,"  the  political  party  of  the  Roman 
CathoUcs  in  Germany,  much  in  the  same  way  as 
the  Belgian  Socialists  did  to  German  Social- 
Democracy.  Their  stronghold  was  in  the  Flem- 
ish part  of  the  country,  where  there  was  a  distinct 
racial  sympathy  for  Germany.  France  was  in- 
tensely unpopular  with  them,  for  pohtical  and 
isocial  reasons  as  the  Mother  of  Revolutions,  and 
for  ecclesiastical  motives  as  the  pioneer  of  the 
emancipation  of  the  State  from  clerical  power. 
Especially  since  the  separation  of  State  and 
Church  and  the  expulsion  of  the  congregations 
that  had  rebelled  against  the  law  on  popular  edu- 
cation, there  was  hardly  a  sermon  preached  in  a 
Belgian  church  which  did  not  refer  to  France  as 
an  instrument  of  the  devil  and  a  hotbed  of  cor- 
ruption and  infidelity.  Germany,  on  the  con- 
trary, now  that  the  last  echoes  of  the  Bismarck- 
ian  "Kulturkampf"  had  long  ago  died  out,  was 
praised  for  the  particular  friendliness  which  the 
imperial  government  had  of  late  shown  towards 
the  Church.  Last,  but  not  least,  the  Hapsburg 
dynasty,  which  had  so  much  contributed  to 
strengthen  the  political  position  of  the  Church  in 


56     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

the  eighteenth  century,  when  Belgium  was  under 
Austrian  rule,  was  held  in  veneration  by  all  Bel- 
gian Catholics.  When  Austria  declared  war  on 
Serbia,  the  newspapers  controlled  by  the  Cath- 
olic government  took  the  Austrian  side  out- 
spokenly, and  played  a  conspicuous  part  in  the 
vituperation  of  the  Serbs. 

Yet,  after  the  German  ultimatum,  there  was 
only  one  Belgian  Catholic — old  Count  Woeste, 
the  leader  of  the  reactionary  wing  of  his  party — 
who  declared  himself  in  favour  of  a  policy  of  pla- 
tonic  protest,  without  active  resistance  to  Ger- 
many's plans.  He  found  nobody  to  follow  him. 
On  the  contrary,  all  through  the  German  occu- 
pation, the  Belgian  Catholics,  headed  by  Cardi- 
nal Mercier,  were  a  very  energetic  element  of 
patriotic  resistance,  with  the  exception  of  a  very 
small  part  of  the  Flemish  low  clergy  who  sym- 
pathised with  the  so-called  activist  movement 
fostered  by  the  German  Government. 

Thus  in  a  few  hours  Germany  transformed  a 
peace-loving  nation,  which  had  always  been  fa- 
vourably disposed  towards  her,  over  whom  she 
had  established  an  intellectual  and  commercial 
influence  almost  amounting  to  a  protectorate,  and 
which  was  anything  but  prone  to  militant  nation- 
alism, into  her  bitterest  foe.  There  is  something 
almost  pathetic  in  the  curse  on  Germany's  des- 
tiny that  made  her,  right  at  the  outset,  disclose 
her  true  purpose  by  an  act  that  outraged  the  con- 


NINETEEN-FOURTEEN  57 

science  of  the  whole  world,  nay,  that  caused  the 
world  to  realise  that  it  had  a  conscience — the  act 
that  made  a  Chinese  child  say:  Belgium  is  not  a 
road,  it  is  a  country.  It  was  the  more  pathetic, 
in  that  it  turned  a  nation  of  pacifists  and  anti- 
militarists  into  a  nation  of  soldiers. 

It  was  not  the  accident  of  my  Belgian  birth,  it 
was  the  fate  that  turned  Belgium  into  the  symbol 
of  violated  right  that  made  me  a  soldier.  I  think 
I  should  have  felt  and  acted  exactly  the  same 
way  if  I  had  not  been  a  Belgian.  True,  if  I  had 
lived  thousands  of  miles  away,  the  strength  of 
my  impulse  would  have  been  less,  for  exactly  the 
same  reason  that  makes  one  more  impressed  by 
a  quarrel  next  door  than  by  a  catastrophe  that 
kills  ten  thousand  people  on  a  faraway  conti- 
nent ;  but  the  nature  of  the  impulse  would  have 
been  the  same.  If  you  walk  along  the  street  and 
see  a  big  hooligan  attack  a  weak,  unsuspecting 
woman,  you  do  not  stop  to  consider  who  the 
woman  is.  You  go  for  the  bully.  That  was  ex- 
actly the  impulse  that  moved  me,  and  as  I  was 
right  in  the  middle  of  the  fray,  it  was  strong 
enough  to  draw  me  in. 

It  mattered  precious  little  what  my  view  of 
Belgian  patriotism  was.  Who  cares  who  the 
woman  is?  I  have  admitted  already  that  I  had 
several  reasons  to  find  fault  with  her.  As  a 
Socialist,  and  as  a  supporter  of  Flemish  aspira- 
tions in  favour  of  cultural  autonomy,  there  were 


58    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

many  reasons  why  my  patriotism  was  not  ortho- 
dox. I  wished  fervently  to  see  all  frontiers  dis- 
appear and  all  civilised  nations  become  part  of 
one  vast  union;  but  in  the  meantime,  I  felt  that 
the  same  principles  of  common  honesty  that  are 
a  condition  to  organised  life  amongst  individuals 
should  equally  apply  to  relations  between  states. 
Indeed,  I  cannot  conceive  of  any  higher  form  of 
international  organisation — call  it  if  you  will,  the 
United  States  of  the  World — that  could  develop 
except  from  a  gradual  recognition  and  universal 
application  of  those  same  principles  of  mutual 
fairness  and  loyalty.  I  certainly  found  many 
faults  in  Belgian  institutions,  laws,  and  charac- 
teristics; but  after  all,  it  was  up  to  the  Belgian 
people  to  change  these  things  if  they  wanted  to. 
Their  Constitution,  which  provides  for  popular 
self-government,  gives  them  the  means  to  do  it. 
Nothing,  however,  can  be  done  unless  that  self- 
government  be  made  safe  against  the  aggression 
of  a  foreign  power.  There  was  such  a  bitter  so- 
cial struggle  in  Belgium  for  the  improvement  of 
labour  conditions  and  labour  legislation,  which 
were  very  much  behind  those  of  the  neighbouring 
great  countries,  that  Belgian  Socialists  often 
quoted  Jules  Guesde's  saying  that  the  wealthy 
and  the  poor  of  a  nation  have  but  one  thing  in 
common:  the  battlefield.  But  even  though  this 
should  be  so,  is  it  not  an  essential  interest  of  both 
combatants  that  this  battlefield  should  be  kept 


NINETEEN-FOURTEEN  59 

free  from  foreign  interference?  Is  it  not  of 
equal  importance  to  them  that  the  rules  of  the 
tournament,  as  set  by  the  community  of  political 
institutions,  of  speech  and  traditions,  should  not 
be  upset? 

As  to  the  grievances  of  the  Flemings,  they 
were  serious  enough,  but  since  the  Belgian  Con- 
stitution puts  the  Flemish  and  French  languages 
on  the  same  footing,  and  since  the  Flemings  form 
a  majority  of  the  nation,  there  is  not  one  of  these 
grievances — lack  of  a  Flemish  University,  insuf- 
ficient administrative  autonomy,  exclusive  use  of 
French  in  the  army,  etc. — which  could  not  be  re- 
dressed by  using  the  liberties  for  propaganda  and 
facilities  for  amending  the  law,  which  the  Consti- 
tution of  Belgium  provides.  More  than  that,  the 
protection  of  these  liberties  and  facilities  against 
Prussianism  appeared  as  an  essential  condi- 
tion to  the  realisation  of  Flemish  aspirations. 
Whether  the  Flemings  liked  an  army  command- 
ed in  French  or  not,  whether  they  preferred 
something  different  from  a  common  army  or  a 
common  administration  altogether,  mattered  lit- 
tle, since  the  German  invasion  compelled  them 
to  use  whatever  army  they  had  to  defend  the 
democratic  institutions  that  were  essential  to  any 
increase  of  their  cultural  autonomy. 

But  what  is  the  use  of  going  into  such  details 
of  argument?  Regardless  of  any  particular  de- 
sires or  ideals  as  to  what  our  state  ought  to  be 


60     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

and  ought  to  do,  there,  in  spite  of  all  its  imper- 
fections and  shortcomings,  it  stood  and  had  to  be 
maintained  if  any  improvement  were  to  be  pos- 
sible. It  was  being  attacked  by  another,  larger 
state,  for  having  refused  to  break  a  pledge  to 
which  this  other  state  itself  had  been  a  party.  It 
had  either  to  admit  that  any  state  stronger  than 
itself,  might,  regardless  of  right  and  treaties, 
force  its  will  upon  it,  or  else  to  fight.  It  chose  to 
fight,  and  the  whole  people  backed  it. 

To  defend  Belgium  was,  therefore,  to  fight 
for  something  very  much  more  important  than 
that  this  particular  country  should  continue  to 
exist.  It  meant  fighting  for  the  right  of  nations 
to  choose  their  own  form  of  government,  and  to 
have  that  form  of  government  respected  by  all 
other  states  in  accordance  with  the  principles  of 
common  fairness  and  loyalty  to  promises,  which, 
by  universal  consent,  govern  the  relations  of  men. 

The  stronger  my  reluctance,  as  an  internation- 
alist and  a  socialist,  to  follow  the  lead  of  those 
who  beheved  in  "my  country,  right  or  wrong,"  or 
to  consider  the  problem  of  the  war  from  the  view- 
point of  any  particular  nation,  the  clearer  was 
my  realisation  that  the  wrong  done  to  Belgium 
was  but  a  symbol  of  the  menace  of  German  ag- 
gression to  what  is  an  essential  condition  to  so- 
cialism, as  I  conceived  it,  and  to  internationalism 
itself.  Not  until  I  shouldered  a  rifle  did  I  know 
what  it  meant  to  be  a  citizen  of  the  world. 


NINETEEN-FOURTEEN  61 

The  first  three  or  four  months  of  the  war  were 
a  period  of  purely  animal  hfe,  void  of  all  think- 
ing. This  period  covers  the  first  phase  of  opera- 
tions, that  of  open  warfare  which  preceded  the 
stabihsation  of  the  Belgian  front  on  the  Yser.  I 
was  first  a  private  in  the  infantry;  later  a  cor- 
poral; and  then  a  sergeant.  The  actual  hard- 
ships were  terrible,  much  more  so  than  anything 
that  happened  to  any  army  since,  and  could  prob- 
ably only  be  compared  to  those  of  the  Serbian 
army  in  its  great  retreat.  Yet  these  'months 
were  one  of  the  happiest  times  of  my  life. 

This  was  mostly  due  to  purely  physiological 
reasons:  the  joy  of  open-air  hfe,  of  continuous 
exercise  and  the  exhilaration  of  physical  adven- 
ture. Add  to  this  the  happiness  of  comradeship, 
the  novelty  and  freedom  of  our  unconventional 
life,  and  the  smihng,  fatahstic  thoughtlessness 
created  by  constant  danger  under  continuously 
varying  circumstances.  I  felt  like  a  boy  of  fif- 
teen throughout.  Even  if  I  had  had  time  to 
bother  about  anything  but  the  elementary  needs 
of  physical  hfe,  I  do  not  think  I  should  have 
done  so.  I  felt  free  from  all  cares.  Only  one 
thing  mattered:  to  remain  ahve  if  possible;  and 
that  could  not  be  helped  by  worrying. 

Those  of  my  comrades  who  belonged  to  the  so- 
called  educated  classes  all  felt  more  or  less  the 
same  way,  with  the  exception,  of  course,  of  those 
who  were  physically  unable  to  stand  the  hard- 


62     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

ships  of  our  life.  I  must,  however,  have  felt  the 
happiness  of  it  with  more  than  usual  intensity. 
Thanks  to  tKe  strength  of  my  health,  my  train- 
ing as  a  sportsman,  and  my  naturally  sanguine 
and  gay  disposition,  the  physical  sufferings  ap- 
peared to  me  but  as  the  magnified  vicissitudes  of 
a  picnic.  The  filth  at  one  time  became  very  dis- 
agreeable, but  it  helped  one  to  appreciate  all  the 
more  the  value  of  a  pail  of  cold  water  and  some 
of  the  main  elementary  joys  of  life  connected 
with  its  use.  I  have  always  strongly  resented 
the  necessity  of  doing  intellectual  work,  a  real 
torture  to  me  at  times.  My  native  instincts  and 
my  bodily  constitution  are  those  of  a  rancher,  of 
a  hunter — or  of  a  soldier.  I  felt  unspeakable 
delight  at  having  at  last  struck  a  way  of  living 
that  suited  these  fundamental  instincts. 

Some  of  the  happy  carelessness  of  those  days 
may  also  have  been  due  to  the  certainty  that,  by 
obeying  a  good  impulse — and  the  happiness  at- 
tained thereby  proved  that  it  was  good — I  re- 
lieved myself  of  the  burden  of  self -questioning. 
I  was  moreover  no  more  than  a  particle  of  a  huge 
machine  over  which  I  had  no  control.  I  did  not 
even  know  enough  of  its  working  to  be  able  to 
form  any  ideas  about  it.  I  certainly  knew  less 
about  war  operations  than  the  man  in  the  street 
ten  thousand  miles  away  from  the  front;  for  I 
hardly  ever  caught  sight  of  a  newspaper,  and  all 
that  I  knew  about  the  operations  I  was  engaged 


NINETEEN-FOURTEEN  63 

in  was  what  concerned  my  own  company  or  bat- 
talion. I  never  dreamt  when  we  were  harassing 
the  German  lines  of  communication  early  in  Sep- 
tember, that  we  were  helping  to  win  the  battle 
of  the  Marne.  I  did  not  know  that  I  had  been 
in  the  retreat  of  the  Belgian  army  from  Antwerp, 
until  it  was  all  over.  All  I  had  to  do  was  to  obey 
orders,  and  get  as  many  hours  of  sleep  as  I  could 
to  rest  my  tired  body.  With  a  clear  conscience 
and  the  constant  immanence  of  death,  physical 
wants  and  bodily  pain  became  in  themselves  a 
joy.  So  great  is  the  delight  of  a  soul  at  peace 
with  itself,  since  it  has  found  in  submission  to 
duty  a  single  all-dominating  purpose. 

It  did  not  require  a  great  effort  of  imagination 
to  realise  that  my  chances  of  seeing  it  through 
unhurt  were  but  slight.  I  remember  having  dis- 
cussed this  subject  more  than  once  with  some  of 
my  comrades,  detachedly  and  almost  jokingly, 
but  with  the  precise  judgment  of  surgeons  de- 
bating a  "case."  My  conclusion  was  that  if  I 
might  choose  between  the  certainty  of  losing  a 
limb  and  the  uncertainty  of  my  fate  as  a  soldier, 
the  odds  were  such  that  the  safest  choice  would 
have  been  the  loss  of  a  limb.  This  careless  state 
of  mind  may  seem  strange  in  view  of  the  fact 
that  I  had  left  a  wife  and  child  at  home.  I  feel 
bound  to  confess  that,  much  though  I  loved  them, 
I  bothered  very  httle  about  them  in  those  days. 
My  wife  had  considered  my  enlistment  as  a  mat- 


64     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

ter  of  course  and  been  very  brave,  and  my  atti- 
tude of  mind  towards  her  was  exactly  the  same 
as  towards  a  soldier-comrade :  she  too  had  to  take 
chances.  She  told  me  much  later  that  she  had 
never  been  really  worried  about  me  either;  the 
certitude  that,  whatever  happened,  I  would  not 
get  killed,  never  left  her.  I  can  only  explain  this 
mutual  freedom  from  fear  by  the  fact  that  we 
were  both  exalted  with  fighting  determination 
to  such  a  pitch  as  to  trust  bhndly  in  Fate.  Such 
can  be  the  power  of  spirit  over  flesh. 

It  was  about  this  time  that  Karl  Liebknecht 
came  to  Brussels  and  saw  my  wife.  He  had  been 
my  most  intimate  friend  during  my  stay  in  Ger- 
many, when  he  was  already  concentrating  his 
efforts  on  antimilitarist  propaganda.  His  en- 
deavor to  bring  the  Social-Democratic  Party  to 
an  attitude  of  active  opposition  against  the  ultra- 
militarist  tendencies  of  imperial  Germany  had 
then  met  with  little  success.  He  hoped,  however, 
that  the  younger  generation  would  be  more  re- 
ceptive, and  therefore  took  a  leading  part  in  the 
socialist  young  people's  movement,  which  about 
that  time  began  to  assume  a  certain  importance 
in  Germany.  My  efforts  were  directed  towards 
the  same  aim.  Together,  we  created  the  Inter- 
national Socialist  Young  People's  Federation, 
of  which  Liebknecht  was  president  and  I  secre- 
tary, and  which  we  mainly  considered  as  a  means 
to  promote  an  antimilitarist  spirit  in  Germany 


NINETEEN-FOURTEEN  65 

and  Austria.  I  collaborated  with  him  in  writing 
the  pamphlet  "Militarismus  und  Antimihtar- 
ismus,"  for  which  he  was  sentenced  to  four  years' 
imprisonment  in  a  fortress. 

Our  friendship  was,  however,  based  on  some- 
thing more  than  intellectual  collaboration.  I 
never  agreed  with  all  his  ideas,  thinking  him 
somewhat  crankish  and  too  impulsive  at  times. 
I  am  sure,  nevertheless,  that  he  would  never  have 
become  the  fanatic  he  was,  in  the  last  bolshevik 
stage  of  his  career,  had  it  not  been  for  the  over- 
straining of  his  nerves,  caused  by  years  of  perse- 
cution, that  made  him  forget  everything  save 
his  fury  at  the  cowardice  and  hypocrisy  of  the 
German  Majority  Socialists.  Yet  it  was  that 
very  downrightness  and  idealistic  impulsiveness 
which  strongly  differentiated  him  from  the  Ger- 
mans of  his  generation,  that  made  me  like  him 
so.  He,  likewise,  showed  himself  very  partial  to 
me.  He  was  a  great  admirer  of  Belgian  social- 
ism, and  he  often  said  that  he  expected  the  Bel- 
gians to  give  European  socialism  an  intellectual 
lead,  since  they  combined  the  thoroughness  of 
mind  of  the  Teutonic  races  with  the  energy  of 
the  Anglo-Saxons  and  the  fiery  enthusiasm  of 
the  Latins. 

I  had  not  heard  from  him  since  he  spent  a 
couple  of  days  with  me  in  Brussels,  a  few  weeks 
before  the  war.  All  I  knew  about  his  attitude 
towards  the  war  was  that  he  was  one  of  the 


66    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

fourteen  Social-Demo6ratie  members  of  the 
Reichstag  who  had  abstained  from  voting  the 
war  credits  on  August  4?th.  In  the  second  week 
of  September,  he  visited  occupied  Belgium  to 
learn  the  truth  about  the  mutual  accusations  of 
atrocities.  It  is  this  journey  that  convinced  him 
of  the  falsehood  of  the  German  stories  about 
franc-tireurs,  and  of  the  truth  of  the  atrocities 
perpetrated  by  the  German  soldiery.  His  de- 
termination openly  to  oppose  war  dates  from 
that  visit. 

^  On  his  arrival  in  Brussels,  he  went  to  see  my 
wife.  Two  Belgian  Socialist  deputies,  who  had 
accompanied  him  from  Liege,  were  with  him. 
They  treated  him  very  cordially,  since  he  had 
given  unmistakable  evidence  of  his  friendly  feel- 
ings, not  only  by  his  statements  in  broken 
French,  but  by  his  successful  intervention  in 
favour  of  ill-treated  Belgian  civilians  threatened 
with  execution  by  the  German  troops  at  Andenne 
and  near  Tirlemont.  These  good  people  were 
somewhat  surprised  to  find  that  my  wife  received 
Liebknecht  rather  coolly,  and  for  a  couple  of 
hours  talked  to  him  in  German  in  a  tone  of  vio- 
lent reproach,  which  Liebknecht  received  with 
evident  signs  of  emotion.  Tears  filled  his  eyes 
when  she  told  him  what  she  thought  of  the  atti- 
tude of  the  German  Social-Democrats.  He 
apologised  for  not  having  voted  against  the  war 
credits  himself  by  saying  that  he  was  at  the  time 


NINETEEN-FOURTEEN  67 

too  badly  informed,  but  he  had  since  realised  that 
Germany  had  been  the  aggressor  and  that  Bel- 
gium's resistence  was  justified.  When  she  told 
him  that  I,  the  antimilitarist,  had  become  a  sol- 
dier in  order  to  fight  against  militarism,  he  said 
that  I  was  right,  and  that  in  my  place  he  would 
have  done  the  same.  This  statement  was  report- 
ed to  me  a  few  weeks  later,  and  did  more  to 
strengthen  me  in  my  attitude  than  anybody  else's 
opinion  would  have  done. 

I  was  to  need  strengthening  sooner  than  I  ex- 
pected. After  the  battle  of  the  Yser,  the  monot- 
onous routine  of  trench  warfare  succeeded  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  first  three  months  of  open 
fighting.  I  was  sent  to  the  rear  as  an  instructor 
and  spent  three  months  drilling  recruits  in  camps 
in  Normandy.  Everything  was  in  a  terrible 
state  of  disorganisation  there,  and  the  hardships 
which  had  been  found  so  easy  to  bear  in  the  brunt 
of  fighting  now  became  almost  intolerable,  all  the 
more  so  as  they  were  avoidable,  and  largely  due 
to  the  incapacity  for  organisation  and  improvisa- 
tion of  the  military  bureaucrats  in  the  rear,  who 
had  found  themselves  suddenly  transplanted 
from  their  old  Belgian  barracks  into  a  foreign 
environment.  The  loss  of  many  brave  comrades 
fallen  in  battle,  which  I  had  hardly  time  to  think 
about  when  it  happened,  began  to  weigh  heav- 
ily on  my  mind,  now  that  I  could  collect  my 
thoughts.    Altogether,  it  was  a  time  of  depres- 


68     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

sion,  a  natural  reaction  following  the  exaltation 
of  the  beginning.  So  I  seized  the  first  oppor- 
tunity that  presented  itself  to  return  to  the  front, 
as  a  Belgian  liaison  officer  attached  to  a  British 
division  in  Flanders.  Such  high  expectations 
were  aroused  at  that  time  by  the  ide'a  of  the 
"spring  offensive" — expectations  that  were  to  be 
renewed  with  equal  want  of  success  for  four 
years — that  I  little  suspected  that  I  would  have 
to  remain  for  fourteen  months  in  the  same  sector, 
with  Gve  different  divisions  reheving  each  other 
in  succession.  It  was  the  famous  "Plug  Street 
Wood"  area,  a  much  quieter  part  of  the  front 
than  the  Ypres  salient  proper  or  most  places 
further  south,  but  "lively"  enough  to  make  such 
a  long  stay  without  the  interruption  of  a  period 
in  rest  billets  somewhat  of  a  strain  on  the  nerves. 
Above  all,  it  was  a  dreary  country.  There  was, 
along  the  line  of  trenches,  the  desolation  of  the 
muddy  fields  of  Flanders;  while  our  billets  were 
situated  amid  the  gloom  and  sordidness  of  the 
dirty  industrial  villages,  with  their  endless  rows 
of  poor  brick-houses.  It  well  deserved  to  be  the 
scene  of  Captain  Bairnsfather's  first  inspiration 
as  a  caricaturist  of  the  grim  humour  of  the  front. 
The  whole  spirit  of  the  "Plug  Street  Wood" 
area  lives  in  his  deservedly  popular  cartoons 
"Staying  at  a  Farm,"  "This  Muddy  War,"  "Di- 
recting  the  Way  at  the  Front,"  and  many  others. 
This  period  of  trench  warfare,  that,  including 


NINETEEN-FOURTEEN  69 

my  subsequent  return  to  the  front  of  the  Belgian 
army  as  a  trench  mortar  officer  covers  the  whole 
of  1915,  1916  and  part  of  1917,  was  a  time  of 
painful  doubting,  searching  introspective  analy- 
sis, and  uninterrupted  struggle  against  moral 
depression. 

At  first  the  war  had  appeared  to  me  as  a  mere 
fight  of  the  Belgians  and  the  French,  helped  by 
England,  for  the  repulse  of  invasion.  Our  "war 
aim"  was  to  protect  our  homes,  the  integrity  of 
our  territory,  the  existence  of  our  institutions, 
our  nationahty  itself,  against  aggression  from  a 
power  that  had  set  out  to  annihilate  them  by  a 
sudden,  masterly  stroke.  This  aim  would  have 
been  attained  by  beating  the  invader  back  behind 
his  own  frontier. 

The  stabiUsation  of  the  Western  front,  how- 
ever, soon  made  it  appear  that  a  purely  strategi- 
cal decision  of  that  sort  was  not  to  be  expected. 
At  the  same  time  it  became  evident  that  there 
were  other  issues  involved,  incomparably  more 
important  and  intricate  than  the  mere  clearing  of 
the  invaded  territory  from  the  armies  of  occupa- 
tion. 

There  was  Russian  Czardom,  the  presence  of 
which  amongst  the  Entente  powers  did  not  fit  in 
with  the  theory,  based  on  an  impulsive  general- 
isation of  the  case  of  France  and  Belgium,  that 
we  were  fighting  in  defence  of  advanced  demo- 
cratic institutions  against  the  aggi-ession  of  a 


70    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

backward  despotic  regime.  Then  England,  her 
colonies  and  her  dominions  soon  began  to  throw 
such  a  weight  into  the  balance,  that  the  war  de- 
veloped primarily  into  a  contest  of  power  be- 
tween the  British  and  the  German  empires.  The 
Japanese  undertaking  against  Kiau-Tshau,  the 
expeditions  against  the  German  colonies  all  over 
the  world,  the  fighting  on  the  Egyptian  border, 
in  Mesopotamia  and  on  the  Gallipoli  Peninsula 
clearly  showed  that  something  more  was  at  stake 
than  the  possession  of  Belgium  and  the  North  of 
France.  The  British  fleet,  which  in  the  begin- 
ning had  been  but  a  means  to  protect  the  lines 
of  communication  between  the  old  country,  her 
expeditionary  force  and  her  Empire,  and  to  keep 
the  German  navy  from  the  scene  of  action,  now 
became  an  offensive  weapon  in  an  economic  war 
against  blockaded  Germany,  a  war  which  was 
much  more  terrible  and  promised  ultimately  to 
be  much  more  decisive  than  any  operations  on 
land.  Germany  retaliated  by  starting  on  her 
submarine  campaign.  The  whole  world  began 
to  take  sides.  Countries  entered  the  lists  whose 
interests  were  not,  like  England's,  directly  af- 
fected by  the  territorial  extension  of  Germany 
along  the  shores  of  the  North  Sea  and  the  Chan- 
nel. Italy  threw  in  her  lot  with  the  Entente. 
Turkey  and  Bulgaria  sided  with  the  Central 
Powers.  In  practically  every  neutral  country, 
America  included,  the  propaganda  by  the  bel- 


NINETEEN-FOURTEEN  71 

ligerent  powers  and  the  economic  problems 
caused  by  the  blockade  of  Germany  and  the  sup- 
ply of  the  belhgerents  with  foodstuffs  and  war 
implements  created  antagonistic  currents  of  feel- 
ing and  clashes  of  interests. 

But  it  also  appeared  that  the  war  was  to  be 
something  more  than  a  mihtary  and  naval  con- 
test of  power.  Cleavages  of  opinion  became 
apparent  within  the  borders  of  both  warring 
groups.  The  seeming  unanimity  of  the  German 
people  at  the  beginning  of  the  war  was  broken 
by  the  protests  of  Liebknecht  and  of  a  growing 
minority  of  Independent  Sociahsts,  clamouring 
that  they  had  been  misled  in  August,  1914.  In 
Russia,  some  of  the  radical  elements  supported 
the  war,  the  others  were  intensely  against  it, 
whilst  the  government's  energetic  action  in  the 
suppression  of  vodka  and  the  Czar's  promise  of 
independence  to  Poland  suggested  fundamental 
changes  in  the  attitude  of  the  ruling  powers.  In 
South  Africa  there  appeared  to  be  a  strong  re- 
belhon,  not  entirely  due  to  German  propaganda, 
against  mihtary  participation.  It  seemed  as 
though  an  increasing  fraction  of  the  Irish  were 
going  to  avail  themselves  of  Britain's  difficulties 
to  foster  a  revolution  with  or  without  Germany's 
support.  It  became  known  that  the  Slav  nation- 
ahties  of  the  Hapsburg  monarchy,  which  seemed 
at  first  to  have  been  caught  by  the  general  war- 
fever,  now  took   an  independent   and   almost 


72     THE  REMAKING.  OF  A  MIND 

threatening  attitude.  The  Pope,  followed  by 
most  of  the  representatives  of  the  Catholic 
Church  in  the  neutral  states,  committed  himself 
to  a  policy  of  peace  by  negotiation  that  public 
opinion  in  the  Entente  countries  took  for  an  at- 
tempt to  favour  Germany's  ambitions  and  save 
his  beloved  Austria  from  disruption.  It  became 
evident  that  a  considerable  part  of  the  popula- 
tion of  Alsace-Lorraine,  far  from  being  bullied 
into  submission  by  the  increased  ruthlessness  of 
the  Prussian  methods  of  administration,  mani- 
fested a  desire  to  return  to  France.  In  occu- 
pied Belgium,  the  *  Germans  encouraged  the 
movement  of  a  minority  of  Flemings  that  aimed 
at  separation  from  the  Belgian  Kingdom  with 
the  assistance  and  under  the  protectorate  of  the 
German  Empire.  Last  but  not  least,  there  ap- 
peared to  be  amongst  the  working  classes  of  the 
Entente  countries,  which  had  at  first  seemed  to 
give  wholehearted  support  to  a  war  of  national 
defence,  an  active  and  growing  minority  of  dis- 
senters, who  found  strong  support  amongst  the 
socialists  of  neutral  countries. 

The  first  statements  of  these  latters'  views 
came  to  my  notice  in  November,  1914,  when  I 
again  had  leisure  to  read.  They  were  in  maga- 
zines, newspapers  and  pamphlets  by  British, 
French,  Dutch  and  Swiss  socialists  of  the  pacifist 
type.  My  first  impression  was  painful  resent- 
ment of  what  I  thought  to  be  a  wrongful  lack 


NINETEEN-FOURTEEN  73 

of  appreciation  of  the  motives  of  those  socialists 
who,  hke  myself,  had  accepted  the  duty  of  taking 
part  in  the  defence  of  their  country.  But  I  soon 
realised  that  the  matter  deserved  very  serious 
attention.  There  was  nothing  in  what  they  said, 
however  unacceptable  and  unjust  it  seemed  to 
be  at  first  sight,  which  did  not  call  forth  an  echo 
in  my  innermost  sentiments. 

Some  of  those  who  were  saying  that  this  war 
was  nothing  but  a  conflict  between  two  groups 
of  imperialist  powers  for  world  dominion,  and 
that  therefore  it  should  be  internationally  op- 
posed by  labour,  I  knew  to  be  men  and  women 
of  high  intellectual  standing  and  unexceptional 
moral  character.  Up  to  August,  1914,  I  had 
been  in  complete  sympathy  with  them.  What, 
then,  had  come  between  us  ?  Why,  in  a  crisis  like 
this,  when  our  lives  and  the  fate  of  our  nations 
were  at  stake,  should  we  stand  in  diametrically 
opposed  camps? 

The  principles  on  which  their  reasoning  rested 
had  always  been  mine,  and  the  sentiments  to 
which  they  appealed  were  the  very  sentiments 
that  had  made  me  act  as  I  had  acted.  They 
spoke  of  the  ideal  of  international  brotherhood, 
of  the  criminal  fratricide  of  workers,  whose  in- 
terests were  common,  in  the  cause  of  an  egoistic 
class  of  oppressors.  Was  it  possible  that  I 
should  have  been  misled  to  the  extent  of  lending 
a  willing  hand  in  such  a  cause?    The  very  weight 


74    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

of  the  charge  made  a  thorough  self-examination 
necessary. 

There  was  one  of  their  statements,  and  appar- 
ently a  fundamental  one,  the  truth  of  which  I 
could  not  deny.  This  war  had  been  brought 
about  by  the  antagonism  of  interests  of  imperial- 
ist powers.  It  was  not  a  freak  of  history.  It  was 
the  outcome,  the  unavoidable  outcome,  of  the 
capitalist  system  of  production.  The  Marxian 
theory  explained  how  this  system  led  to  the  pro- 
duction of  a  larger  quantity  of  goods  than  could 
be  bought  by  the  income  of  those  who  made  them. 
Hence  a  growing  tendency  in  all  industrial  coun- 
tries to  secure  new  outlets  abroad,  under  the  pro- 
tection of  their  flag,  for  this  surplus  of  produc- 
tion. At  the  same  time,  it  became  more  and 
more  necessary  to  draw  raw  materials  and  food 
supplies  from  foreign  countries.  If  the  latter 
were  on  a  lower  level  of  civilisation,  this  was  a 
further  incentive  to  gain  political  control  over 
their  territories.  All  this  meant  colonialism,  im- 
perialism and  competitive  armaments  on  land 
and  sea.  These  tendencies  were  common  to  all 
great  powers  and,  as  the  surface  of  the  world  is 
limited,  naturally  brought  them  into  conflict  with 
each  other.  The  chief  antagonism  since  the  be- 
ginning of  this  century  was  between  the  British 
Empire  and  Germany.  Between  these  two,  a 
tension  had  arisen  that  could  only  lead  to  war. 
England's  development  as  an  industrial  power 


NINETEEN-FOURTEEN  75 

had  been  earlier  than  Germany's,  and  she  had 
secured  most  of  the  world  before  Germany's 
hunger  awoke.  But  the  last  score  of  years  had 
witnessed  an  enormous  expansion  of  German  in- 
dustry and  trade,  whilst  England's  position  in 
the  world's  trade  had  remained  by  comparison 
stationary.  Satiated  British  imperialism  could 
neither  give  its  possessions  away,  nor  tolerate  the 
formation  of  another  world-wide  power,  so  that 
German  imperialism  could  not  get  what  it 
wanted  for  its  continued  development  without 
taking  it  from  somebody  else.  This  deadlock 
was  bound  to  end  with  a  clash  of  arms. 

Similarly,  the  internationalist  argued  that  the 
attitude  of  the  other  powers,  like  Russia,  France 
and  Italy,  was  dictated  by  the  desire  of  their 
capitalist  class  for  imperiahst  expansion.  The 
national  interests  of  the  capitalists,  they  said, 
need  not,  however,  concern  the  working  classes. 
Labour's  interest  was  the  same  the  world  over, 
and  could  only  be  promoted  by  international  un- 
derstanding and  brotherhood.  Therefore,  labour 
should  not  take  any  part  in  this  war,  for  which 
the  capitalist  classes  alone  were  responsible  and 
for  which  they  should  be  held  up  to  universal 
opprobrium.  The  only  way  to  end  this  war,  and 
even  to  end  war  altogether,  was  for  the  Socialists 
to  oppose  it  in  every  country.  They  should 
hinder  their  governments  in  its  prosecution,  and, 
by  taking  the  political  and  industrial  power  from 


76     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

the  then  ruling  classes,  establish  a  proletarian 
regime  which  would  make  and  maintain  peace  as 
the  natural  expression  of  the  international  soli- 
darity of  labour.  The  Sociahsts  who  for  some 
different  reason  were  helping  their  governments 
to  prosecute  the  war  were  either  traitors  to  the 
cause  of  socialism  or  victims  of  nationalist  intoxi- 
cation. They  were  putting  the  interests  of  the 
capitalist  class  of  their  country  above  the  inter- 
ests and  ideals  of  the  international  proletariat. 

This  was,  in  its  most  consistent  and  clearest 
form,  the  theme  of  those  socialists  who  called 
themselves  internationalists.  It  found  expres- 
sion in  the  international  conferences  called  at 
Zimmerwald  and  Kienthal,  in  Switzerland,  by 
majorities  of  the  socialist  parties  of  Italy  and 
Switzerland,  the  bolshevik  fraction  of  Russian 
socialism,  and  minorities  from  France,  England, 
Germany,  Austria  and  a  few  other  countries. 

There  was  another  section  of  European  social- 
ism, comprising  the  majority  of  the  German, 
Austrian  and  Hungarian  Social  -  Democrats, 
more  or  less  openly  supported  by  some  fractions 
of  the  Sociahst  Parties  in  the  Balkan  States, 
Scandinavia  (especially  in  Denmark),  Italy  and 
the  United  States,  who  took  a  view  that  differed 
both  from  that  of  the  ''Majority  Socialists"  of 
the  Entente  countries  and  that  of  the  "interna- 
tionalists." Like  the  latter,  they  emphasised  the 
imperialist  character  of  the  war,  but  they  put 


NINETEEN-FOURTEEN  77 

the  chief  responsibility  on  the  powers  arrayed 
against  the  Central  Empires,  and  advocated  the 
support  of  the  latter  governments  by  the  labour 
movements  in  their  countries.  I  hardly  need 
point  out  that,  although  I  carefully  listened  to 
what  they  had  to  say  in  defence  of  the  German 
and  Austrian  case,  I  was  from  the  beginning  so 
unfavourably  disposed  towards  them  that  my 
judgment  and  sentiment  were  never  disturbed. 
I  found  it  much  more  troublesome,  however, 
to  dispose  of  the  claims  of  the  internationalists. 
I  confess  that,  for  two  years  at  least,  they  made 
my  mind  a  prey  to  doubt.  This  doubt  was  a  tor- 
ture, for  it  threatened  to  undermine  the  sound- 
ness of  a  cause  for  which  at  any  moment  I  might 
have  to  give  my  life.  I  hasten  to  add  that  the 
frequent  mental  conflicts  thus  caused  invariably 
resulted  in  my  conclusion  that  I  had  been  right 
in  August,  1914.  Even  while  they  lasted,  they 
never  affected  my  will  to  do  my  duty  as  a  soldier. 


IV 


THE   SPELL   OF   DOGMATISM 

"Alles  erklart  sich  wohl,"  so  sagt  mir  ein  Schiiler,  "aus  jenen 
Theorien,  die  uns  weislich  der  Meister  gelehrt." 
Habt  Ihr  erst  einmal  das  Kreuz  von  Holze  tiichtig  gezimmert, 
Passt  ein  lebendiger  Leib  freilich  zur  Strafe  daran. 

Goethe. 

In  spite  of  the  pain  caused  me  by  the  doubts 
arising  from  the  criticisms  of  the  international- 
ists, they  were  so  beneficial  to  me  that  I  am  grate- 
ful now  for  every  hour  of  merciless  self -analysis 
they  cost  me.  For  this  analysis  has  given  me 
much  more  than  the  certitude  that  ITiad  not  been 
mistaken  in  my  view  of  what  was  at  stake  in 
August,  1914.  To  it  I  owe  the  lasting  benefit 
of  having  put  my  whole  method  of  thinking,  my 
attitude  towards  society  and  the  world,  through 
a  fiery  test  that,  as  I  now  reaUse,  has  emanci- 
pated me  from  many  things  that  were  not  a  part 
of  my  true  self.  It  has  torn  from  my  eyes  the 
veil  of  doctrinarianism.  It  is  less  to  the  ordeal  of 
shell  and  shot  than  to  this  hammering  test  of  my 
conscience  that  I  owe  the  remaking  of  my  mind. 

The  premises  of  the  internationalists'  thesis — 
the  imperiahst  origin  of  this  war — was  correct, 

78 


THE    SPELL   OF   DOGMATISM   79 

but  the  deduction  they  drew  from  this — the  nec- 
essity of  opposition  to  the  war  in  every  country — 
was  entirely  wrong.  Its  original  fault  was  due, 
not  to  any  technical  mistake  in  the  reasoning,  but 
to  the  method  itself  on  which  that  reasoning  was 
based.  I  found  this  false  method  to  be  at  the 
bottom  of  many  more  wrong  deductions  than  this 
particular  one.  The  same  logical  defect,  for  in- 
stance, lies  at  the  root  of  the  theory  of  bolshe- 
vikism.  It  consists  in  the  assumption,  which 
I  think  illegitimate,  that  an  actual  attitude 
towards  an  historical  fact  can  be  derived  by  way 
of  logical  deduction  from  abstract  predicates 
gained,  not  by  the  study  of  these  facts  them- 
selves, but  by  induction  from  other  previous 
facts. 

I  consider  the  first  part  of  the  international- 
ists' thesis  as  unassailable;  that  the  war  was  the 
outcome  of  antagonisms  of  interest  resulting 
from  the  need  of  imperiaUst  expansion  of  coun- 
tries at  an  advanced  stage  of  capitalist  develop- 
ment. Many  non-socialists  undoubtedly  agree 
with  it,  accepting,  for  instance,  its  particular  ap- 
plication to  the  economic  motives  of  German- 
British  antagonisms.  The  economic  conditions 
in  which  this  war  originated  are  those  of  capital- 
ism in  its  satiated,  imperialist  stage,  where  its 
faculty  of  quantitative  production  has  outgrown 
the  possible  needs  of  the  home  market.  In  so 
far  it  is  right  to  say  that  this  war  was  a  capitalist 


80    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

war,  or  an  imperialist  war.  It  is  also  right  to 
say  that  socialism,  that  is  an  hypothetical  social 
system  based  on  public  ownership  and  democratic 
control  of  the  main  means  of  production,  would 
make  any  such  war  impossible. 

But  what  is  capitalism?  What  is  imperialism? 
What  is  socialism?  Do  these  words  refer  to  ac- 
tual historic  facts,  to  things  as  they  are  or  were 
in  a  certain  place  at  a  certain  time?  By  no 
means.  Socialism,  as  a  system  of  social  organ- 
isation, is  a  hypothesis.  And  there  never  has 
been  a  moment  in  history  when  one  could  say: 
now  capitaUsm  is.  Nothing  ever  is,  except  an 
immense  diversity  of  fluctuating  facts.  Every- 
thing is  on  its  way  to  become  something  else. 
Our  mind  cannot  even  grasp  an  isolated  physical 
phenomenon  until  it  has  already  ceased  to  be 
what  it  was  when  we  recorded  it.  What  we  call 
capitalism,  or  feudalism,  or  primitive  communism, 
are  certain  imaginary  combinations  of  charac- 
teristics which  a  large  number  of  economic  facts 
over  a  long  historical  period  have  in  common. 
These  abstractions  do  not,  however,  coincide,  at 
any  actual  time,  with  the  whole  of  the  economic 
facts  even  in  a  single  spot.  In  every  civilised 
country  we  now  have  methods  of  production  of 
the  capitalist  system  alongside  with  survivals  of 
pre-capitalist  stages,  as  well  as  methods  which 
are  abeady  incompatible  with  the  idea  of  capi- 
talism to  the  extent  that  they  may  be  called  feel- 


THE    SPELL   OF   DOGMATISM   81 

ers  towards  socialism.  But  even  if  we  confine 
ourselves  to  certain  phenomena  in  which  we  rec- 
ognize the  characteristics  of  capitalism,  who  would 
say:  this  is  actual  capitaUsm?  Do  not  we  all  see 
that  these  phenomena  are  no  more  today  what 
they  were  yesterday,  and  know  that  they  will  not 
be  tomorrow  what  they  are  today?  Moreover, 
is  not  the  very  assumption  that  there  are  eco- 
nomic facts  as  distinct  from  say  psychological 
or  political  facts,  evidence  that,  for  the  sake  of 
clear  thinking,  we  draw  in  our  minds  imaginary 
boundaries  between  different  classes  of  phenom- 
ena? Yet  we  know  that  in  the  real  social  world 
facts  are  so  mingled  that  we  can  speak  of  con- 
sidering one  and  the  same  occurrence  from  an 
economic,  a  psychological,  a  pohtical,  or  any 
other  viewpoint. 

The  mere  fact  that  abstract  notions  like  those 
of  capitalism  and  sociahsm  are  static,  whilst  the 
actual  realities  of  life  are  dynamic,  proves  that 
coincidence  between  the  two  is  a  mythical  as- 
sumption. For  if  we  stick  to  the  abstraction  of 
say  imperialism  as  the  system  of  politics  that  cor- 
responds to  the  satiated  stage  of  capitalism,  and 
without  more  ado  apply  this  to  facts  of  contem- 
porary history,  we  shall  have  to  put  Woodrow 
Wilson  and  Kaiser  Wilhelm  the  Second  under 
the  same  label  as  representatives  of  capitalist  im- 
perialism. 

To  such  an  absurd  conclusion  we  come  if. 


82    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

whilst  dealing  with  facts,  we  indiscriminately 
use,  as  elements  of  the  same  logical  process,  facts 
and  categories.  Capitahsm,  imperialism,  social- 
ism are  categories.  War  itself — ^War  with  a  big 
W,  War  in  general — is  a  category.  They  are 
imaginary  things,  equipped  with  attributes  which 
result  from  generalisation  and  analytical  induc- 
tion. We  use  these  categories  as  instruments 
necessary  to  scientific  thinking.  But  we  should 
keep  in  mind  the  difference  between  the  instru- 
ment of  thinking  and  its  object.  Categories  and 
facts  are  on  as  different  a  plane  as  a  chemical  for- 
mula and  the  matter  it  stands  for. 

This  is  not  an  indictment  of  abstract  thinking, 
but  a  warning  against  its  misuse.  It  is  thanks  to 
our  faculties  of  imagination  and  abstraction  that 
we  are  able  to  think  scientifically.  Without  the 
use  of  such  categories  as  capitalism,  imperialism 
and  socialism  we  should  be  helpless  to  find  a  clue 
to  whatever  knowledge  that  matters  in  the  in- 
finite variety  and  complexity  of  events.  To  show 
the  limits  beyond  which  they  should  not  be  used 
is  to  pay  a  compliment  to  their  usefulness. 

I  should  not  think  it  worth  while  to  expatiate 
on  such  commonplace  notions  if  I  had  not  been 
made  to  realise  the  tremendous  harm  done  in 
these  days,  when  pubUc  education  and  the  news- 
papers give  a  cheap  veneer  of  knowledge,  by  the 
indiscriminate  propagation  of  catchwords  which 
the  masses  too  easily  take  for  granted  as  facts. 


THE    SPELL    OF   DOGMATISM   83 

I  say  this  with  purposed  reference  to  the  sociahst 
movement. 

To  people  with  as  pronounced  a  faculty  for 
abstract  thinking  as  the  Germans  and  the  Jews, 
this  sort  of  mischief  with  catchwords  has  been  a 
curse.  The  Russian  sociahsts,  who  have  sat  at 
the  feet  of  both  German  and  Jewish  masters, 
have  learned  from  them  the  lesson  of  Bolshevik- 
ism,  which  is  nothing  but  an  attempt  to  apply 
to  certain  actual  conditions  abstract  doctrines 
which  have  been  derived  from  conditions  entirely 
different.  By  this  I  do  not  mean  to  explain  the 
Bolshevik  movement  by  the  accident  of  a  flaw 
in  a  logical  process.  To  do  this  would  be  to  make 
their  mistake  my  own,  and  confuse  the  abstract 
with  the  concrete.  Bolshevikism  as  a  movement 
has  its  origin  in  certain  actual  conditions,  to 
which  I  will  refer  later,  but  as  a  theory,  it  is  a 
brilliant  illustration  of  the  absurdity  of  making 
actual  deductions  from  categories. 

Marx  is  often  held  responsible  for  this  propen- 
sity not  only  of  the  Bolsheviki,  but  of  all  the 
doctrinal  socialists.  It  is  true  that  the  Bolshe- 
viki and  most  of  the  "Internationahst"  Sociahsts 
claim  to  be  the  representatives  of  "pure"  Marx- 
ianism.  But  on  the  other  hand  we  find  many,  if 
not  most  of  those  socialists  who  before  the  war 
played  the  main  part  in  the  spreading  of  Marx- 
ian principles  and  their  apphcation  to  pohtics,  in 
the  ranks  of  those  whom  their  reaUstic  view  of 


84     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

the  war  caused  to  be  branded  by  the  Bolsheviki 
as  "vulgar  patriots"  or  "opportunists."  I  will 
mention  Karl  Kautsky  foremost,  who  has 
achieved  more  than  anybody  else  as  a  student 
and  exponent  of  Marxianism.  As  one  of  the 
leaders  of  the  Independent  Social-Democrats  in 
Germany,  he  has  emphatically  repudiated  the 
Bolshevik  version  of  internationalism  and  ac- 
cepted the  theory  of  German  and  Austrian  re- 
sponsibility for  the  war.  In  England  the  leader 
of  the  Marxian  school  of  socialism,  H.  M.  Hynd- 
man,  has  fully  deserved  the  epithet  of  an  ultra- 
patriotic  socialist.  The  father  of  Russian  Marx- 
ianism, George  Plekhanoff,  was  one  of  the  most 
ardent  supporters  of  the  war.  In  France,  the  old 
pioneer  of  Marxianism,  Jules  Guesde,  who  in 
1914  became  a  member  of  the  first  Ministry  of 
National  Defence,  represented  an  almost  ex- 
treme patriotic  view,  whilst  his  younger  follow- 
ers like  Compere-Morel  and  those  around  him 
were  also  decidedly  pro-war.  In  Marxian  litera- 
ture, Belgium  used  to  be  represented  by  Louis 
de  Brouckere  and  myself.  We  both  enlisted  the 
same  day.  In  neighbouring  Holland,  the  father 
of  Dutch  Marxianism,  Frank  van  der  Goes, 
from  the  beginning  expressed  his  agreement  with 
the  win-the-war  sociahsts  of  the  Entente  coun- 
tries. Even  in  the  United  States,  the  attitude 
of  most  of  the  foreign-born  members  of  the  So- 
cialist Party  should  not  make  one  forget  that 


THE    SPELL    OF   DOGMATISM   85 

there  are  many  Marxians  amongst  those  Amer- 
ican socialists  who  left  the  party  because  of  its 
failure  to  support  the  war. 

All  these  men,  by  the  way,  belong  to  a  type 
very  different  from  the  cosmopolitan  set  pre- 
dominantly of  East  European  origin,  who  form 
the  background  of  international  bolshevikism. 
It  strikes  me  that  none  of  the  names  I  have  just 
mentioned  is  Jewish,  and  that  half  of  them  de- 
note an  origin  from  among  the  so-called  upper 
strata  of  European  society.  I  point  this  out 
merely  as  a  contribution  to  a  psychological  ex- 
planation, and  not  by  any  means  as  an  attack 
on  the  Jewish  race.  It  is  quite  wrong  to  assume 
that  Bolshevik  doctrinarianism  is  practically 
confined  to  the  Jews,  or  that  there  are  no  Jews 
among  the  win-the-war  sociahsts  of  the  Entente 
countries  and  their  sympathisers  elsewhere.  Al- 
though the  Jews,  as  a  cosmopolitan  element  par 
excellence y  form  a  particularly  favourable  re- 
cruiting ground  for  bolshevikism  and  other  "in- 
ternationalist" doctrines,  it  would  be  a  danger- 
ous disregard  of  the  importance  of  the  causes 
in  which  these  doctrines  originate  to  ascribe  them 
to  mere  racial  circumstances.  There  is  many  a 
Bronstein,  alias  Trotzki,  amongst  the  bolshevik 
leaders  in  all  countries,  but  there  are  also  such 
aristocratic  names  as  Wladimir  Ulianoff  Lenine 
and  Henriette  Roland  Hoist-van  der  S chalk,  be- 
sides a  few  as  genuinely  Prussian  as  Franz  Meh- 


86    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

ring,  as  typically  Scandinavian  as  Sverre  Krogh 
or  Hinke  Bergegren,  as  authentically  Anglo- 
Saxon  as  Lansbury  or  Debs,  or  as  truly  Latin 
as  Bourderon,  Loriot,  Brizon  and  Raffin- 
Dugens.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  lack  of 
Jews  in  Russia  and  elsewhere,  amongst  those 
sociahsts,  Marxian  and  otherwise,  who  sup- 
ported the  war  for  Democracy  or  even  took  a 
combatant  part  in  it.  Yet  when  all  this  is  said, 
it  remains  a  fact  that,  as  a  rule,  the  attitude  of 
mind  of  the  Marxian  Sociahsts  has  been  largely 
influenced  by  the  extent  to  which  they  were  as- 
sociated with  the  national  civilisation  of  their 
countries.  Hence  the  different  frame  of  mind 
of  those  whose  forefathers  have  been  for  many 
generations  linked  with  this  life  and  those  who 
have  never  been  allowed  to  strike  their  roots 
anywhere. 

Marxianism  is  not  a  system,  but  a  method. 
The  results  obtained  by  this  method  depend  on 
who  uses  it,  how  he  uses  it,  and  what  he  uses  it 
for.  So  much  is  certain,  that  Marx  himself  has 
used  it  in  a  very  different  way  from  those  who 
now  lay  claim  to  the  monopoly  of  his  inspiration. 
If  he  were  still  ahve  he  probably  would  not  be  a 
Marxian. 

It  is  true  that  the  strength  of  Marx,  like  that 
of  Spinoza  and  most  Jewish  thinkers,  lay  in  his 
power  of  abstract  thinking.  The  claim  of  his 
faithful  famulus  Engels  that  he  made  socialism 


THE    SPELL    OF   DOGMATISM   87 

scientific  is  not  to  be  taken  in  the  sense  that  he 
equipped  the  socialist  movement  with  a  perfect 
system  of  final  knowledge  about  the  laws  of  so- 
cial development.  It  merely  means  that  he  had 
been  the  first  to  base  his  view  of  socialism  not  on 
Utopian  desires,  but  on  a  study,  by  scientific 
methods,  of  the  laws  of  economic  and  historic 
development,  the  unavoidable  outcome  of  which 
he  thought  sociahsm  would  be.  He  was  com- 
pelled to  use  inductive  analysis  in  order  to  dis- 
cover the  laws  of  capitahst  economy.  About  the 
middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  long  before 
capitalism  had  reached  the  acme  of  its  develop- 
ment, he  had  to  show  the  historic  necessity  of  so- 
cialism and  to  formulate  its  programme.  The 
concrete  knowledge  of  contemporary  facts  ar- 
rived at  by  Marx,  important  though  it  was,  is 
anything  but  final.  Who  would  go  back  to 
works  written  half  a  century  ago  for  an  accurate 
description  of  a  system  of  production  which  has 
made  more  progress  since  these  works  were  writ- 
ten than  it  had  before?  Surely  there  are  pages 
in  Marx's  writings  where  his  prophetic  genius 
still  strikes  one  with  amazement;  but  prophecy, 
though  it  may  be  evidence  of  the  extraordinary 
power  of  a  scientific  method,  is  not  in  itself  a 
method.  Even  such  Marxian  theories  as  that  of 
value,  which  depend  on  the  knowledge  of  actual 
facts,  no  longer  appear  to  us,  in  the  light  of 
what  has  since  happened,  as  a  final  explanation; 


88     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

they  are  now  merely  an  important  and  brilliant 
chapter  in  the  history  of  economic  doctrine. 
They  were,  as  all  similar  theories  before  and 
after,  no  more  than  a  hypothesis  of  which  the 
relative  soundness  is  to  be  measured  by  its  rela- 
tion to  the  facts  known  at  the  time  when  it  was 
conceived. 

A  much  more  lasting  value  attached  to  the 
method  of  investigation  used  by  Marx.  His 
interpretation  of  the  struggle  of  economic  class 
interests  as  the  dynamic  power  of  social  progress 
has  revolutionised  methods  of  historical  investi- 
gation. His  explanation  of  conflicting  class  in- 
terests by  the  system  of  production  prevailing  at 
a  given  period,  and  of  this  system  of  production 
as  the  result  of  a  given  state  of  development  of 
the  means  of  production  has  proved  a  particu- 
larly valuable  clue  to  historical  research.  The 
value  of  this  clue  is  so  far  from  being  exhausted, 
that  there  are  whole  fields  of  investigation — e.  g., 
the  history  of  science,  the  progress  of  strategy, 
and  the  development  of  nationality — ^where  the 
first  attempts  at  utilisation  of  the  Marxia^ 
method  have  not  been  undertaken  until  quite  re- 
cently. On  the  other  hand,  investigations  like 
those  set  on  foot  of  late  years  by  Rudolf  Hilferd- 
ing  on  financial  capitalism,  by  Karl  Kautsky  on 
the  theory  of  population,  and  by  Rosa  Luxem- 
burg on  the  economic  background  of  imperialism 
have  shown  that  even  on  Marx's  own  field  of  re- 


THE    SPELL   OF   DOGMATISM   89 

search,  his  method  could  still  yield  interesting 
results. 

But  is  it  as  needful  of  amendment  as,  for  in- 
stance, was  that  of  Darwin  in  the  realm  of  natu- 
ral science.  A  method  of  investigation  is  but  an 
instrument,  and  when  the  instrument  ceases  to  be 
perfectible,  it  is  no  longer  of  any  use.  The 
Marxian  method  no  more  leads  to  absolute  truth 
in  matters  where  truth  is  but  a  relative  and  sub- 
jective quantity  than  any  other  process  for  the 
interpretation  of  history  ever  has  done  or  could 
do.  But,  in  my  opinion,  it  is  still  far  from  the 
stage  where  it  will  cease  to  be  the  most  useful 
of  all  instruments  at  our  disposal.  Whether  the 
label  be  Marxian  or  not,  I  do  not  think  that  the 
European  labour  movement  will  readily  give  up 
such  an  intellectual  weapon.  The  appeal  of  the 
labour  movement  to  social  idealism  is  all  the 
stronger  since  it  makes  even  the  every-day  strug- 
gle for  petty  improvements  appear  as  part  and 
parcel  of  a  great  historic  movement  for  the  re- 
form of  society.  It  finds  supreme  self-reliance 
in  the  knowledge  that  its  aims,  its  progress  and 
its  ultimate  victory  are  as  necessary  a  conse- 
quence of  the  contemporary  phase  of  capitalism 
as  were,  in  earlier  phases,  the  downfall  of  feudal- 
ism, the  decay  of  the  guild  system,  the  establish- 
ment of  political  democracy,  and  the  abolition  of 
slavery. 

If  it  be  true  then  that  Marxianism  is  but  a 


90    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

method  of  investigation,  there  is  no  more  reason 
to  make  Marx  responsible  for  bolshevikism  than 
there  would  be  to  blame  the  discoverer  of  oil  for 
the  crime  of  an  incendiary.  His  fate  is  that  of 
^all  scientific  innovators  and  system-builders.  The 
greater  their  genius,  the  worse  the  harm  done  by 
the  class  of  people  whom  Schiller  had  in  mind 
when  he  said  with  reference  to  Kant:  *'When 
kings  build,  there's  a  job  for  the  carters."* 

Marx,  Hke  Kant,  and  so  many  others,  is  a 
victim  of  the  law  of  the  least  effort.  It  is  so 
very  much  easier  to  recite  the  formula  in  which 
he  concentrated  what  was  most  liable  to  amend- 
ment in  the  results  of  his  research,  than  to  grasp 
what  makes  the  lasting  value  of  his  work — the 
living  spirit  of  his  method.  Characteristically 
enough,  this  method  is  never  explicitly  formu- 
lated in  his  own  works,  so  that  it  has  to  be  dis- 
tilled from  the  study  of  his  writings  and  of  his 
pohtical  activity.  Whoever  undertakes  this 
study  will  be  struck  by  the  numerous  instances 
of  Marx's  almost  prophetic  sneering  at  those 
who  read  the  letter  but  are  bhnd  to  the  spirit. 
This  spirit  was  not  that  of  dogmatism.  It  was 
not  syllogistic,  but  dialectic.  His  analysis  of  the 
tendencies  of  capitahst  development  will  be 
found  magnificently  alive  with  the  dynamic  spirit 
that  checks  its  own  findings  by  contradiction  and 

*  Wenn  die  Konige  bau'n,  haben  die  Karrner  zu  tun  ( Kant  und 
seine  Ausleger), 


THE    SPELL   OF   DOGMATISM  91 

sees  perpetually  moving  facts  where  others  but 
stare  at  milestones.  It  is  as  pregnant  with  the 
sense  of  dialectic  motion  and  evolution  as  is  the 
involved  and  progressing  reahty  of  the  capitalist 
society  he  surveyed. 

Most  of  this  I  had  abeady  realised  before  the 
war.  Between  the  ages  of  eighteen  and  twenty- 
two  I  had  myself  sinned  against  the  spirit  by  idol- 
ising the  letter.  I  had  just  outgrown  then  the 
Utopian  and  purely  sentimental  stage  of  social- 
ism, and  was  carried  away  by  the  enthusiasm  of 
my  discovery  of  Marxianism  as  a  system  that 
promised  to  equip  my  desires  with  the  victorious 
infalhbihty  of  science.  My  dogmaticism,  how- 
ever, did  not  long  withstand  the  dissolvent  influ- 
ence of  a  more  intimate  contact  with  real  life  as 
time  went  by.  Especially  during  the  three  years 
that  preceded  the  war,  which  were  almost  entirely 
devoted  to  practical  social  work  in  Belgium,  I 
had  come  to  a  view  of  things  in  which  a  much 
more  modest  part  was  played  by  abstract  the- 
ories. My  connection  with  the  trade  union  move- 
ment had  had  a  particularly  strong  influence  in 
that  direction.  But  not  until  the  war,  when  I 
found  myself  at  grasps  with  the  disastrous  con- 
sequences of  a  doctrinarianism  which  I  had  my- 
self contributed  to  spread,  did  I  fully  reaUse  the 
necessity  of  a  thorough  self-examination.  The 
first  definite  conclusion  I  then  came  to  was  that, 
just  as  philosophy  begins  with  the  theory  of 


92     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

knowledge,  so  the  value  of  any  theory  of  social 
progress  depends  on  the  recognition  of  the  limi- 
tation of  its  field. 

We  Marxian  Socialists  had  succumbed  to  the 
fascination  of  a  theory  that  not  only  gave  us  an 
unsurpassed  instrument  for  the  discovery  of  some 
of  the  main  causes  of  historic  progress,  but  ap- 
pealed at  the  same  time  to  reason  by  its  fierce 
analytic  power  and  to  constructive  imagination 
by  its  bold  foreknowledge  of  a  future  conceived 
as  the  resultant  of  unalterable  laws.  So  far  so 
good.  But  our  propaganda  had  carried  a  super- 
ficial knowledge  of  the  formulae  that  synthesised 
these  theories  into  the  minds  of  people  who  ig- 
nored the  method  through  which  they  had  been 
arrived  at,  and  who  therefore  lacked  both  the 
knowledge  of  the  natural  limits  of  this  method 
and  the  capacity  to  use  it  as  a  means  perpetually 
to  revise  its  own  results.  So  one  day  we  found 
ourselves  confronted  by  people  who  used  the 
very  formulae  which  they  had  learned  from  us 
in  a  way  totally  dift'erent  from  the  one  we  had 
intended.  Arguing  helped  no  longer :  When  we 
talked  facts  they  answered  by  dogmas. 

It  was  of  course  an  easy  excuse  to  say  that  such 
is  the  penalty  of  all  vulgarisation  of  knowledge. 
I  for  one  have  not  tried  to  shield  myself  in  this 
fashion,  but  say :  mea  culpa, 

I  had  to  lay  the  axe  at  the  root  of  the  evil,  and 
start  from  the  principle  that  theoretical  views 


THE    SPELL    OF   DOGMATISM   93 

about  the  general  causes  of  contemporary  wars 
should  not  cause  one  to  replace  facts  by  cate- 
gories. These  views  should  merely  help  to  a 
better  understanding  of  the  facts  and  to  the 
judgment  of  each  case  on  its  own  merits.  Thus 
the  solution  of  the  particular  problem  of  labour's 
attitude  towards  this  war  became  comparatively 
simple. 

My  starting  point  was  the  same  as  that  of  the 
"internationalist"  sociahsts.  This  war  was  due 
to  general  causes,  internationally  inherent  to  the 
present  social  system,  and  therefore  the  attitude 
of  socialists  should  be  inspired  by  a  universal 
view  of  the  case. 

I  further  agreed  with  the  internationalist  that 
in  view  of  the  menace  to  civilisation  of  a  war 
originating  in  the  opposition  of  interests  between 
minorities  of  the  involved  nations,  it  was  the  duty 
of  labour  to  try  to  prevent  its  outbreak  by  all 
means.  This  had  indeed  been  done,  as  long  as 
there  was  the  slightest  chance  of  averting  the  con- 
flict, in  what  proved  to  be  the  only  possible  way: 
by  bringing  pressure  to  bear  in  each  country 
upon  its  government  to  keep  it  from  aggression 
and  to  make  it  help  the  other  governments  in 
finding  an  amicable  solution.  These  attempts 
had  been  unsuccessful,  because  the  power  behind 
them  was  insufficient,  at  least  in  some  of  the 
countries  involved.  The  war  had  become  a  fact 
in  spite  of  our  efforts. 


94    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

I  ceased  to  be  in  agreement  with  the  interna- 
tionalists however  when  they  said  that  this  fact 
need  not  alter  our  policy  and  that  we  should  con- 
tinue, irrespective  of  the  strategical  or  territorial 
situation,  to  oppose  the  conduct  of  the  war  in 
every  country. 

This  policy  was  based  on  the  twofold  assump- 
tion that  the  strategical  and  territorial  situation 
did  not  affect  the  interests  of  labour,  and  that 
all  the  governments  engaged  in  the  war  were 
equally  responsible  and  animated  by  the  same 
detestable  motives. 

I  considered  that  both  these  assumptions  were 
false. 

First  of  all,  I  thought  that  labour,  having  been 
unable  to  prevent  hostilities,  had  nevertheless,  to 
say  the  least  of  it,  the  same  interest  as  the  other 
classes  of  a  given  country  in  opposing  the  inva- 
sion of  its  territory  and  the  replacement  of  its 
self -chosen  government  by  the  rule  of  a  foreign 
domination.  This,  by  the  way,  was  the  logical 
conclusion  from  one  of  the  most  fundamental 
principles  of  both  the  first  and  the  second  Inter- 
nationale: the  right  of  each  nation  to  dispose  of 
itself.  All  the  international  Socialist  and  Labour 
Congresses  had  considered  it  a  matter  of  course 
that,  should  a  country  be  attacked  by  a  foreign 
power  threatening  to  take  away  this  right  of  self- 
disposal,  the  working  classes  should  participate 
in  the  duty  of  national  defence. 


THE    SPELL   OF  DOGMATISM   95 

So  the  decisive  question  came  down  to  this: 
was  it  possible,  in  this  war,  to  draw  a  distinction 
between  the  aggressors  and  the  victims  of  ag- 
gression? 

The  "internationalists"  denied  this  possibility, 
on  the  ground  that  imperialism  was  universally 
responsible.  They  said  that  the  only  aggressor 
was  international  capitalism  and  the  only  victim 
the  international  proletariat;  so  that  there  was 
but  one  alternative  to  the  war — socialism — and 
but  one  policy — international  social  revolution. 

Thus  were  categories  substituted  for  facts. 
For  the  conception  of  this  war  was  as  an  aggres- 
sion of  capitalism  against  labour  was  an  abstrac- 
tion based  on  categories,  not  only  different  from, 
but  opposed  to  the  facts  of  the  case. 

These  facts  were  military  and  naval  opera- 
tions as  a  test  of  power  between  states.  Far 
from  grouping  international  capitalism  against 
the  international  proletariat,  the  war  involved 
at  least  a  temporary  rupture  of  the  universal 
solidarity  of  interests  of  these  two  groups.  They 
were  no  doubt  extremely  deplorable  facts,  but 
they  were  very  tangible  all  the  same,  much  more 
tangible  than  any  armchair-formula  to  the  mil- 
lions who  fought  in  the  firing  line,  lived  in  in- 
vaded territory,  or  suffered  any  of  the  thousand- 
fold consequences  by  which  the  reality  of  this 
titanic  struggle  was  brought  home  to  the  inhabi- 
tants of  Europe. 


96     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

Yet  there  were  but  two  alternatives:  either  to 
shut  one's  eyes  to  the  facts  and  withdraw  into  the 
reahn  of  these  formulae,  or  to  accept  their  real- 
ity, face  their  consequences,  and  draw  their  log- 
ical conclusions. 

For  those  who,  like  myself,  took  the  latter 
course,  these  conclusions  were  clear  enough. 
They  were : 

First,  that,  although  imperialist  capitalism  had 
created  the  conditions  which  made  a  world's  war 
possible,  the  main,  immediate  and  actual  respon- 
sibility for  this  particular  war  rested  on  Ger- 
many and  Austria-Hungary,  who  had  shown 
their  aggressive  designs  by  the  latter's  attack  on 
Serbia  and  the  former's  on  Belgium  and  France. 

Second,  that  the  autocratic  form  of  govern- 
ment and  the  aggressive  militarism  of  the  Cen- 
tral Empires,  together  with  the  lack  of  disposi- 
tion on  the  part  of  their  peoples  effectively  to 
oppose  this  system,  made  the  victory  of  these 
powers  incompatible  with  the  progress  of  any 
movement  which  requires  political  freedom,  de- 
mocracy and  peace  for  its  normal  development. 

The  dilemma — either  to  accept  this  conclusion 
of  the  facts,  or  not  to  consider  the  facts  at  all — 
was  obvious,  as  was  shown  by  those  socialists  who 
sided  with  the  Central  Powers,  like  the  majority 
of  Social-Democrats  of  Germany  and  Austria 
themselves.  Although  they  refused  to  accept  the 
internationalists'  postulate  of  opposition  to  war 


THE    SPELL    or   DOGMATISM   97 

in  every  country,  they  had  to  take  refuge,  to 
cloak  the  responsibihty  of  their  governments,  in 
the  "internationalist"  formula  of  the  universal 
responsibility  of  capitalism,  and  persistently  re- 
fused to  consider  the  case  on  its  actual  merits. 
This  is  why,  even  after  the  armistice,  the  ma- 
jority Social-Democrats  continued  to  refuse  any 
discussion  of  the  responsibility  for  the  war.  Hy- 
pocrisy, said  La  Rochefoucauld,  is  the  homage 
vice  pays  to  virtue.  The  attitude  of  the  German 
Social-Democrats  shows  that  similarly  intellect- 
ual duplicity  is  the  homage  falsehood  pays  to 
truth. 

Once  I  had  thus  emancipated  my  mind  from 
the  spell  of  dogmaticism,  and  decided  to  consider 
facts  irrespective  of  previous  general  conclu- 
sions, I  had  gained  control  of  the  weapon  that 
was  ultimately  to  solve  my  doubts  and  give  my 
conscience  peace.  I  was  armed  for  the  struggle, 
but  the  struggle  itself  had  yet  to  begin. 


GERMAN    PATRIOTISM 

.    .    .    the  land  of  the  folk-songs, 
Where  the  gifts  hang  on  the  tree, 
Where   the   girls   give   ale   in   the  morning 
And  the  tears  come  easily. 

G.  K.  Chestebton,  The  Ballad  of  the  White  Horse,  III. 

The  first  problem  that  arose  was  the  revision 
of  my  attitude  towards  Germany  in  general  and 
German  social-democracy  in  particular. 

In  spite  of  my  hatred  of  German  mihtarism 
and  my  disgust  with  German  submissiveness,  in 
spite  also  of  the  fact  that  I  was  constantly  in 
danger  of  being  blown  to  bits  by  a  German  shell 
or  "punctured"  by  a  German  bullet,  I  was  still 
a  German  patriot.  I  am  one  to  this  day.  By  this 
I  mean  that  irrespective  of  Germany's  attitude 
in  this  war,  the  word  Germany  still  suggests  to 
me  other  things  than  ''Feldgrau/^  It  is  associ- 
ated with  many  lovable  recollections  of  the  coun- 
try and  of  the  people ;  with  gratitude  for  the  en- 
richment that  my  spiritual  life  owes  to  German 
art,  literature  and  science ;  with  appreciation  for 
the  part  Germany  has  played  for  centuries  in  the 
progress  of  European  civilisation;  with  the  ar- 

98 


GERMAN    PATRIOTISM  99 

dent  desire  to  see  the  German  nation,  freed  from 
despotism,  recover  in  a  league  of  self-governing 
peoples  a  position  corresponding  to  its  best  qual- 
ities. I  have  always  felt  that  this  war  for  the 
self-government  of  nations  would  not  be  worth 
winning  unless  it  gave  the  German  people  the 
full  rights  to  dispose,  not  only  of  its  territory, 
but  of  its  own  fate,  and  thus  enable  it  to  fulfil 
a  better  destiny  than  that  of  being  the  tool  of  a 
dynasty.  It  is  in  this  sense  I  have  never  ceased 
to  be  a  German  patriot.  While  fighting  against 
the  German  army,  I  was  fighting  for  the  Ger- 
man nation.  Or,  to  put  it  more  accurately,  in 
fighting  against  the  German  nation  of  today  I 
was  fighting  for  the  German  nation  of  tomorrow. 

But  what  a  tragic  contrast  between  the  splen- 
dour of  this  aim,  and  the  barbarity  of  the  fratri- 
cidal means  by  which  it  was  to  be  reached ! 

I  never  felt  this  more  distinctly  than  one  night 
in  June,  1915,  after  an  evening  spent  in  a  village 
a  few  miles  in  the  rear  of  the  front  with  a  friend 
who  at  that  time  was  in  a  neighbouring  sector 
and,  like  myself,  had  been  a  student  at  German 
universities.  I  can  vouch  for  it  that  he  was  as  de- 
termined a  fighter  of  the  "boche,"  whose  bullet 
marks  he  bore  on  his  body,  as  I  was  myself.  But 
the  very  intensity  and  concentration  of  war- 
like purpose  that  had  been  required  for  several 
months  made  both  of  us  aspire  to  some  relaxation 
from  the  thought  of  war.    This  we  found  for  a 


100     THE  HEMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

few  hours  in  the  house  of  the  good  French  people 
who  gave  us  hospitaUty  that  evening,  with  a  suffi- 
cient amount  of  comfort  almost  to  create  the  illu- 
sion of  being  at  home.  As  we  two  sat  alone  after 
supper  with  a  pipe  and  a  glass  of  wine,  we  began 
to  talk  of  Germany — a  Germany  very  different 
from  the  grim  reality  that  faced  us  only  half  a 
dozen  miles  away — ^the  Germany  we  had  both 
known  and  learned  to  love  in  her  universities,  her 
libraries,  her  opera-houses  and  concert-halls.  We 
sang  some  of  the  old  folk-songs  we  had  sung  as 
students.  Songs  of  true  love  and  the  yearning  of 
sentimental  souls ;  songs  full  of  the  fragrance  of 
woods  and  moorland,  breathing  love  of  nature 
and  Wanderlust;  songs  of  the  generation  of  1813 
and  the  BurschenscTiaften,  fired  with  the  spirit  of 
sacrifice  for  the  freedom  of  a  great  nation  in  the 
making;  songs  of  eternal  friendship  and  loyalty, 
songs  inspired  by  the  naive  legends  of  a  fantastic 
''Mdrchenwelt" ;  songs  sparkling  with  the  gentle 
mirth  of  people  who,  through  the  glimmering  of 
a  glassful  of  Rhine  wine,  see  a  rosy  world  full 
of  good  things,  good  friends  and  good  feelings. 
And  we  asked  ourselves :  can  the  soul  of  a  people 
belie  itself  like  that?  Do  these  songs  not  speak 
of  Germany  as  it  really  was  and  will  be  again? 
Is  not  the  revelhng  in  crude  materialism  and 
utter  immorality,  which  followed  its  over-rapid 
rise  to  industrial  power ;  the  bestiahty  of  its  mili- 
tarism; the  brutal  perfidy  of  its  present  attempt 


GERMAN    PATI^IOTISM         l<lt 

to  bully  the  world  into  submission — is  not  all  this 
a  bad  dream,  or  an  illusion  of  our  hatred? 

Thus  we  debated,  forgetting  for  one  evening 
the  pain  of  reality,  as  we  walked  back  under  the 
starlit  sky  of  the  mild  summer  night,  full  of  the 
f  ragi-ance  of  hay  and  birch  leaves,  whilst  the  loud 
croaking  of  the  frogs  in  the  near  brooks  and 
ditches  muffled  the  faint  rattUng  of  machine-guns 
and  the  low  grimibling  of  cannon  in  the  distance. 
Every  now  and  then  ahead  of  us  a  Verey  light 
went  up  from  the  sky-line,  leaving  a  sinuous  trail 
of  sparks,  and  looking  for  a  moment  like  a  star 
among  the  stars,  then  bursting  gorgeously  into 
a  cascade  of  greenish  light  that  seemed  to  fill  the 
horizon  with  fireworks.  The  crescendo  of  our 
feehngs  had  made  us  silently  happy.  No  words 
were  needed  to  tell  each  other  that  we  were  both 
dreaming  of  the  happiness  of  a  reconciliated 
mankind,  and  that  those  lights  in  the  sky  were 
but  fireworks  at  the  festival  of  our  imagination. 
When  finally  one  of  us  took  up  the  motif  of  the 
last  phrase  of  Beethoven's  Ninth  Symphony,  it 
echoed  in  both  our  minds  as  the  fittest  expression 
of  our  exaltation.  As  we  hummed  the  heroic 
passage  of  "freudig,  wie  ein  Held  zum  siegen," 
we  did  not  think  of  the  real  khaki  or  grey-clad 
figures,  at  that  very  moment  crouching,  three 
miles  ahead,  in  fear  of  death,  under  the  outbursts 
of  light  thrown  by  those  fireworks  over  the  shell- 
torn  landscape  of  sandbags  and  wire  entangle- 


lfia;.;.THE  iR-EMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

merits.  Our  *'Held"  was  some  Prometheus, 
fighting  humanity's  eternal  fight  against  hostile 
nature,  conquering  darkness  with  light.  .  .  .  As 
we  came  to  the  climax  of  the  Hymn  to  Joy,  it 
seemed  indeed  as  though  our  minds  embraced  a 
world  reconciled  in  the  universal  joy  of  freedom 
and  as  though  everything  around  us  were  but  a 
passage  in  the  great  symphony  that  was  to  cul- 
minate in  "Seid  umschlungen,  Millionen!  diesen 
Kuss  der  ganzen  Welt!" 

A  shell  screamed  and  threw  up  a  few  sods  and 
some  mud  from  a  ditch  near  by.  My  friend's 
Satanic  laughter  greeted  this  awakening  from  our 
dream.  A  few  minutes  later,  as  we  neared  the 
cross-roads  where  our  ways  parted,  a  bayonet 
glittered  in  the  night  and  a  hoarse  voice  shouted : 
"Halt!  who  goes  there?"  I  answered  "Friends." 
But  we  were  no  longer  thinking  of  the  world- 
friendship  hymned  by  Schiller  and  Beethoven. 
Our  friends  were  all  on  this  side  of  No  Man's 
Land.  Guns  and  rifles  were  the  instruments  with 
which  we  were  then  playing  our  part  in  the 
world's  symphony. 

Yet  could  one  cease  to  remember,  and,  above 
all,  could  one  cease  to  hope?  I  tried  hard  to  do 
so,  for  I  feared — though  this  never  happened — 
that" at  some  decisive  moment  the  strength  of  my 
will  to  fight,  which  means  to  kill  as  many  of  the 
enemy  as  you  can,  might  be  impaired.  But  I 
tried  in  vain.     And,  as  I  now  look  back  upon 


GERMAN    PATRIOTISM         103 

those  years  at  the  front,  I  am  glad  that  it  was 
so,  and  that  I  have  been  able  to  kill  Germans 
without  ceasing  to  love  Germany.  A  few  hours 
of  painful  arguing  with  myself,  a  few  cruel  awak- 
enings from  the  world  of  dreams,  and  even  the 
risk  of  being  misunderstood  by  narrow-minded 
comrades  who  might  have  guessed  right  about 
my  innermost  feehngs  (though  I  never  talked 
more  about  these  things  than  could  be  helped)  — 
this  was  not  too  hea\y  a  price  to  pay  for  the 
blessing  of  not  having  surrendered  my  soul  to 
bhnd  hatred.  After  all,  what  I  loved  Germany 
for  made  me  hate  and  fight  the  Germans  all  the 
better. 

There  are  two  bad  mistakes  that  can  be  made 
in  judging  a  nation.  The  first  is  to  consider  it 
as  a  homogeneous  entity,  irrespective  of  any  dif- 
ferences between  classes  or  individuals.  The 
second  mistake,  which  is  worse  still,  is  to  treat 
national  characteristics  as  always  remaining  the 
same.  Both  errors  unfortunately  are  extremely 
common.  They  are  both  encouraged  by  the 
widespread  belief  in  a  theory  that  explains  na- 
tionality by  racial  characteristics.  This  offers 
the  undoubted  advantage  of  presenting  a  very 
simple  explanation  of  very  complicated  things, 
besides  opening  a  wide  field  to  the  amusing  play 
of  conjecture,  of  personal  sympathies  and  ani- 
mosities. Nevertheless,  this  explanation  is  as 
false  as  it  is  easy. 


104     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

Let  the  dogmatists  of  race  help  us  to  explain 
the  civilisation  of  African  tribes  or  the  migra- 
tions of  Red  Indians.  Very  well.  Let  them  ex- 
periment in  America  with  immigrants  from  East- 
ern Europe.  Very  well  again.  But  for  the  sake 
of  human  science  let  them  refrain  from  any  at- 
tempts to  explain  national  psychology  in  West- 
ern Europe  by  the  colour  of  people's  hair  or  the 
dimensions  of  their  skull;  for  there  they  must 
either  confine  themselves  to  the  domain  of  com- 
monplace or  else  jump  with  both  feet  into  such 
hopeless  conjecture  that  no  benefit  can  result 
from  it  except  amusement  at  the  colossal  dimen- 
sions of  their  fanatic  blunders.  I  wish  some- 
body would  explain  Belgian  or  French  national- 
ity to  me  with  the  help  of  the  race  theory,  and  tell 
me  something  more  than  that  the  present  racial 
characteristics  are  composed  of  those  of  all  the 
races,  nations,  and  tribes — Celts,  Gauls,  Romans, 
Goths,  Franks,  Saxons,  Swabians,  Frisians, 
Basques,  Moors,  Arabs,  Huns,  Britons,  Nor- 
mans, Spaniards,  Jews,  and  whatever  else — that 
have  kept  wandering  about,  fighting  or  mixing 
uninterruptedly  for  a  score  of  centuries.  Are  not 
the  racial  characteristics  of  the  Germans  very 
much  the  same  as  those  of  the  Anglo-Saxons  who 
descend  from  the  same  stock?  And  yet,  what  an 
abyss  between  German  and  Anglo-Saxon  psy- 
chology! There  is  probably  much  more  in  com- 
mon, on  the  other  hand,  between  the  habits  and 


GERMAN    PATRIOTISM  105 

traditions  of  Herr  Fritz  Schulze,  greengrocer  of 
Berlin  on  the  Spree  (who  is  a  flaxen-haired  doli- 
chocephalic descendant  of  the  Saxon  forest- 
dwellers  of  Brandenburg)  and  Monsieur  Marius 
Latignasse,  of  Marseilles  on  the  Rhone  (a  dark- 
haired  brachyacephalic  keeper,  whose  pedigree 
goes  back  to  Phoenician  and  Hellenic  colonisa- 
tion) than  there  is  between  either  of  the  two 
aforesaid  gentlemen  and  Mr.  John  Smith,  clerk 
of  London  on  the  Thames.  Yet  Mr.  John 
Smith's  fair  hair,  pink  complexion  and  long  skull 
make  him  resemble  Herr  Schulze  like  a  brother; 
and  the  Smiths  may  have  lived  in  the  hut  next  to 
Schulze's  in  that  same  old  Brandenburg  forest 
two  thousand  years  ago,  or,  for  that  matter,  in 
the  same  cavern  another  score  of  centuries  earlier 
still.  I  am  of  as  true  a  Flemish  stock  as  any 
(there  was  a  de  Man  amongst  the  Flemish  free- 
men who  fell  in  the  Battle  of  Cassel  in  1328), 
yet  within  the  last  seven  generations,  in  direct 
descent  alone,  there  has  been  Spanish,  French 
and  Dutch  blood  mixed  with  what  may  have  re- 
mained of  the  original  fluid,  of  which  nobody 
knows  or  cares  whether  it  was  Prankish,  Saxon, 
Frisian,  Celtic,  or  of  any  other  tribe  of  pale- 
faced  men  that  walked  upright  on  a  pair  of  legs. 
In  the  cockpit  of  races  which  Western  Europe 
has  been  for  twenty  centuries  at  the  very  least,  it 
is  as  ridiculous  to  base  a  nation's  claim  to  a  soul  of 
its  own  on  race  as  it  is  for  an  aristocrat  to  think 


106    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

that  his  blood  is  of  a  different  colour  from  that  of 
the  plehSy  forgetting  how  easy  it  is  to  calculate 
that  within  the  last  thousand  years,  which  more  or 
less  correspond  to  the  age  of  feudal  aristoc- 
racy, his  blood  may  have  been  made,  at  the  rea- 
sonable rate  of  three  generations  per  century,  out 
of  that  of  2,147,483,646  men  and  women.  The 
corresponding  number  of  sixty  generations, 
which  is  less  than  is  required  to  modify  the  physi- 
cal characteristics  of  a  race,  consists  of  nineteen 
figures.  One  must,  of  course,  make  a  very  hberal 
allowance  for  double  entries  on  account  of  in- 
breeding; but  even  so,  there  remains  quite  a  plehs 
by  itself  to  say  grandpa  and  grandma  to. 

The  war  itself  has  been  the  most  conclusive 
of  all  refutations  of  the  race  theory.  We  have 
seen  the  world  clearly  divided  into  two  camps 
according  to  their  views  as  to  the  fundamental 
principles  of  government:  for  and  against  de- 
mocracy, the  self-disposal  of  nationalities,  the 
recognition  of  international  right  above  the  con- 
venience of  single  states.  Here,  then,  if  ever, 
there  was  a  test  of  national  psychology,  both  for 
the  belligerents  and  the  neutral  peoples.  Yet 
who  could  discern  the  influence  of  race  in  this 
cleavage  of  the  world?  Teutons  of  the  British 
Empire  and  America,  as  well  as  the  "low  Ger- 
man" Flemings  and  Boers,  were  arrayed  against 
the  Teutons  of  Germany.  The  Scandinavians  of 
Norway  favoured  the  Entente;  a  large  part  of 


GERMAN    PATHIOTISM         107 

the  Scandinavians  of  Sweden,  Denmark  and  Fin- 
land sided  with  the  Central  Powers.  The  major- 
ity of  the  Saxons  and  Frisians  of  Holland 
sympathised  enthusiastically  with  the  cause  of 
France;  one-third  of  the  names  of  the  Prus- 
sian Junkers  and  one-half  of  those  of  the  Aus- 
trian officers  were  Slav;  and  Slav  Bulgaria  made 
war  on  Slav  Serbia  and  Slav  Russia.  Half  of 
Latin  Spain  sympathised  with  Germany.  Arabs 
attacked  the  Turks  in  Hedjaz  and  Syria;  but 
other  Arabs  helped  the  Turks  in  GalUpoh.  Scot- 
tish Celts  died  for  the  Empire  at  Ypres;  whilst 
Irish  Celts  died  for  Sinn  Fein  in  Dublin;  Jews 
fought  under  every  standard,  and  I  mention  but 
a  small  part  of  the  evidence. 

In  order  not  to  complicate  the  problem  I  will 
not  refer  here  to  the  cosmopolitan  origin  of  the 
population  of  the  United  States  of  America,  for 
there  we  have  to  consider  nationahty  as  well  as 
race — two  notions  which  should  be  kept  strictly 
apart.  Yet  I  might  point  out  that  if  even  the  ties 
that  bound  immigrated  Americans  to  European 
nationalities  have  not  been  able  to  disrupt  the 
moral  unity  of  the  American  people,  how  much 
more  powerless  must  racial  characteristics  have 
been. 

The  theory  of  those  who  argue  that  the  Ger- 
mans do  not  belong  to  civilised  mankind,  or  are 
constitutionally  vicious,  faithless  and  cruel,  be- 
cause of  their  racial  characteristics,  is  as  childish 


108    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

as  Mr.  Houston  Stewart  Chamberlain's  claim 
that  the  same  racial  characteristics  are  those  of 
a  Herrenvolk  destined  by  God — or  rather,  Gott, 
that  old  crony  of  William  Hohenzollern — to  sub- 
jugate the  world  and  lead  it  to  greater  triumphs. 
Both  theories  may  be  consigned  to  the  Museum 
for  Ethnography,  along  with  the  stone  or  bone 
utensils  of  our  forefathers,  the  forest-dwellers. 

National  characteristics,  namely  those  that  re- 
sult from  a  historic  community  of  language,  in- 
stitutions and  culture,  synthesised  by  a  common 
political  organisation,  are  quite  a  different  mat- 
ter. Here  there  is  room  for  sane  argument.  But 
it  must  be  observed  that  once  the  element  of  race, 
which  for  all  practical  historical  purposes  is  a 
constant  value,  is  eliminated,  all  the  other  com- 
ponents that  constitute  a  nation's  psychology  are 
at  the  same  time  heterogeneous  in  space  and 
variable  in  time. 

They  are  heterogeneous,  even  at  a  given  time, 
because  the  same  causes,  when  related  to  the 
spirit  of  a  nation's  institutions  and  traditions, 
may,  and  very  often  do,  result  in  different,  and, 
even,  in  opposed  characteristics,  according  to  the 
features  of  groups,  or  individual  psychology, 
with  which  they  combine.  Any  attempt  at  scien- 
tific collective  psychology  is  necessarily  based  on 
the  hypothesis  that  the  psyche  of  a  man  living  in 
society  results  from  a  combination  of  influences 
that  vary  according  to  the  different  kinds  of  rela- 


GERMAN    PATRIOTISM  109 

tions  existing  between  this  man  and  other  men. 
To  discern  the  component  parts  of  this  combina- 
tion, individual  men  must  be  studied  as  belong- 
ing simultaneously  to  different  circles  or  groups, 
such  as  originate  in  the  state,  provincial  or  local 
community,  social  class,  profession,  religious 
creed,  political  affiliation,  family  traditions,  kind 
of  public  education  received  and  of  habitual 
reading,  and  so  forth.  Every  one  of  these 
groups,  which  are  either  a  community  of  interests 
or  of  views,  or  else  of  both,  represents  an  ele- 
ment in  the  total  formula  of  what  a  man's  psy- 
chology owes  to  his  associations  with  other  men. 
The  relative  strength  of  these  influences  is  vari- 
able. Class  or  professional  allegiance,  for  in- 
stance, may  have  a  more  powerful  psychological 
effect  upon  nationality  itself.  Thus,  kindred  in- 
terests and  mode  of  life  may  give  a  working  man 
in  Budapest  a  greater  psychological  resemblance 
to  another  working  man  in  Buenos  Ayres  than  to 
a  Hungarian  university  professor  or  landowner 
in  his  own  city.  The  same  may  be  true,  and  very 
often  is  true,  of  this  Hungarian  university  pro- 
fessor and  his  Anglo-Saxon  colleague  in  Seattle. 
Their  psychological  similarity  may  be  much  more 
manifest,  even  in  their  physiognomy  and  gestures 
( say,  in  the  way  they  put  their  spectacles  on  their 
noses),  than  is  any  resemblance  between  our 
Budapest  professor  and  his  fellow-citizen  of  a  dif- 
ferent occupation.  There  is  something  more  than 


110     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

a  joke  in  this.  The  obvious  likeness  in  habits 
and  psychological  peculiarities  between  profes- 
sional categories  all  the  world  over  with  such 
pronounced  characteristics  as  those  of  teachers, 
cab  drivers,  costermongers,  innkeepers  and  many 
others,  are  but  an  illustration  of  the  fact  that 
modern  conditions  of  life  have  created  between 
men  stronger  ties  of  common  interests  and  views 
than  those  of  national  allegiance. 

The  jocular  character  of  these  examples  must 
not  obscure  the  much  more  serious  aspect  of  the 
universahty  of  aspirations  which  the  spread  of  in- 
dustriahsm  has  created  by  approximately  stand- 
ardising the  conditions  that  determine  the  psy- 
chology of  the  working  classes  throughout  the 
world.  And  who  would  deny  that  there  is  more 
similarity  in  the  outlook  on  life  of,  say,  a  French 
imperiahst  steel-magnate  and  a  German  imperi- 
alist steel-magnate,  than  there  is  between  either 
of  the  two  and  the  average  peasant  or  working 
man  of  his  own  country?  Independently,  how- 
ever, of  the  relative  value  of  its  component  ele- 
ments, the  formula  of  group  psychology  resem- 
bles that  of  a  chemical  combination  in  the  way 
a  change  in  one  or  several  of  its  elements  may 
totally  modify  the  actual  result.  So  the  char- 
acteristics of  nationality  may  manifest  them- 
selves very  differently  in  various  social  groups. 

Let  us  choose  an  example  in  Germany.  The 
clumsy  thoroughness  of  German  thinking  is  uni- 


GERMAN   PATRIOTISM         111 

versally  accepted  as  a  feature  of  the  nation. 
Now  let  us  see  how  it  can  work  differently  as  an 
element  in  the  formula  of  class  or  group  psy- 
chology. The  Junker  class  do  not  hold  intel- 
lectual functions  in  very  high  esteem,  because 
they  hardly  need  them  professionally  beyond  the 
moderate  amount  that  is  required  to  judge  the 
race  or  the  age  of  horses  or  to  discern  whether 
some  soldier's  peccadillo  entails  eight  days 
*'C.  B."  or  one  day  "in  the  black  hole."  Never- 
theless, they  have  certain  political  interests  to 
defend,  which  requires  action  in  the  press,  and  in 
parliamentary  and  administrative  bodies.  There, 
then,  the  native  heaviness  of  this  intellectual 
mechanism  will  reveal  itself  as  ruthless  dogma- 
tism in  the  defence  of  material  interests. 

Now  let  us  take  a  different  social  group,  like 
the  extreme  radical  element  of  the  proletariat, 
as  represented  by  the  Spartacus  movement.  Its 
leaders  were  intellectuals  hke  Karl  Liebnecht, 
Franz  Mehring,  Rosa  Luxemburg,  inspired  by 
an  ideahstic  view  of  the  historic  task  of  their 
movement,  and  by  disgust  with  the  narrow- 
minded  materialism  of  the  party  in  power.  Com- 
bined with  the  characteristics  of  this  group,  the 
same  thoroughness  in  thinking  leads  to  a  form 
of  abstract  idealism  which,  whatever  else  its 
faults  may  be,  is  an  impulse  of  the  highest  moral 
order,  and  forms  a  striking  contrast  to  the  results 
of  the  intellectual  characteristics  of  the  Junkers. 


112     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

A  similar  contrast  arises  from  the  comparison 
of  Junker  mentality  with  the  lofty  but  unpracti- 
cal idealism  which,  in  the  case  of  the  old  genera- 
tion of  long-haired,  spectacled  and  absent-mind- 
ed professors,  living  with  their  feet  in  slippers 
and  their  thoughts  in  the  clouds,  resulted  from 
the  combination  of  this  same  Teutonic  thorough- 
ness with  professional  pursuits  entirely  different 
from  those  of  the  Junkers.  The  best  example 
of  their  state  of  mind,  which  is  still  more  com- 
mon than  is  generally  believed,  is  a  story  related, 
if  I  remember  rightly,  by  a  Dutch  journalist.  I 
think  it  is  good  enough  to  make  the  digression 
pardonable. 

An  international  prize  is  offered  for  the  best 
monograph  on  The  Camel.  A  German,  an  Eng- 
lishman and  a  Frenchman,  all  three  University 
professors,  decide  to  compete.  The  Frenchman 
goes  to  Paris,  takes  an  apartment  in  the  Quartier 
Latin  for  a  few  weeks  and  goes  for  a  stroll 
every  afternoon  in  the  Jardin  des  Plantes — the 
local  Zoo.  Then  he  writes  a  book,  full  of  witty 
remarks  and  hons  mots,  about  the  camel  with 
whom  he  has  thus  made  friends.  The  English- 
man packs  his  trunk;  goes  to  the  desert;  spends 
a  year  there ;  then  comes  back  with  a  short,  mat- 
ter-of-fact, but  excellently  worded  description  of 
the  few  things  really  worth  knowing  about  a 
camel.  The  German  hires  a  room  close  to  the 
KonigUche  Bibliothek  in  Berlin,  fills  it  with  to- 


GERMAN    PATRIOTISM         113 

bacco  smoke  for  three  years,  and  then  publishes 
six  volumes  on  "The  Camel  {Camelus  Bactri- 
anus)  from  an  anatomic,  biologic,  zoologic,  eco- 
nomic, etc.,  viewpoint,  in  its  relation  to,  etc.,  with 
special  reference  to,  etc.,  with  several  appendices, 
charts,  diagrams,  etc."  The  fifth  volume  is  de- 
voted to  the  philosophy  of  the  camel  as  an  ab- 
stract entity,  and  the  sixth  is  a  complete  bibliog- 
raphy of  the  subject,  embracing  everything  that 
has  been  written  or  printed  about  camels  since 
the  earliest  stages  of  Egyptian  civihsation. 

It  has  often  been  said  during  the  war,  to  take 
another  example,  that  Germans  have  no  sense  of 
humour.  Now,  it  can  hardly  be  disputed  that 
the  average  German  lacks  the  quickness  of  per- 
ception and  thought  that  is  a  condition  to  what 
Anglo-Saxons,  for  instance,  consider  as  a  hu- 
morous disposition.  The  historieal  explanation 
lies  near  at  hand.  Germany's  development  as 
an  industrial  and  commercial  nation  is  so  recent 
that  it  has  hardly  had  time  to  influence  the  popu- 
lar frame  of  mind.  For  centuries,  and  until  a 
very  short  time  ago,  the  Germans  have  been  a 
nation  of  peasants  and  artisans.  The  peasants 
were  still  practically  serfs  a  century  and  a  quar- 
ter ago,  and  the  artisans  lived  in  a  sphere  almost 
as  narrow  and  in  an  environment  as  unchanging 
as  those  of  the  peasants  themselves.  People  who 
lead  this  sort  of  life  tend  to  turn  the  faculties 
of  their  imagination  towards  music,  philosophic 


114     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

meditation,  and  the  mythology  of  home  and 
nature.  Imagination  does  not  then  leave  the 
domain  of  a  man's  own  mind  and  of  the  small 
world  that  limits  his  outlook.  This  is  probably 
one  of  the  causes  of  the  Teutonic  thoroughness. 
It  certainly  accounts  for  the  slowness  of  the  Ger- 
man mind.  Slow  working  creates  slow  thinking, 
and  slow  thinking  cramps  the  sense  of  humour. 

To  develop  their  sense  of  humour,  the  Anglo- 
Saxons  have  required  the  broad  expanse  of  the 
world  they  made  their  own,  which  they  kept  wid- 
ening, and  in  which  they  moved  about  as  a  na- 
tion of  manufacturers,  seafarers,  traders  and  co- 
lonial pioneers.  It  was  a  world  full  of  contrasts 
and  surprises,  full  also  of  those  adventures  that 
stir  the  faculty  of  the  human  mind  to  reach 
against  adversity  by  fun.  It  is  no  hazard  that 
the  heroic  period  of  English  literary  humour 
synchronizes  with  the  heroic  period  of  early  Eng- 
lish industrialism  and  imperialism,  the  time  of 
Queen  Elizabeth  and  Shakespeare.  Nor  is  it 
mere  coincidence  that  the  west  of  America,  with 
the  intensity  and  speed  of  its  pioneer  life,  full  of 
changing  and  unexpected  conditions  and  impres- 
sions, has  produced  what  to  my  European  mind 
seems  to  be  the  most  concentrated  and  typical 
form  of  American  humour. 

Moreover,  until  a  very  few  years  ago — too 
short  a  time  to  create  any  new  characteristics  of 
mind — there  was  practically  no  sporting  life  in 


GERMAN    PATRIOTISM         115 

Germany.  Thus  it  lacked  an  element  that  seems 
to  become  more  and  more  a  source  of  popular 
humour,  as  is  born  out  by  the  growing  predomi- 
nance of  sporting  expressions  and  images  in 
current  Anglo-Saxon  humorous  literature.  Yet 
it  would  be  false  to  conclude  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  genuine  humour  in  the  Teutonic  soul. 
On  the  contrary,  the  same  contemplative  life  in 
the  narrow  circles  of  peasantry  and  petty  crafts- 
manship— that  resulted  in  slow,  deep  thinking, 
turned  the  imagination  towards  the  sentimental 
life,  and  animated  their  environment  with  mythic 
creations — has  developed  a  strong  sense  for  any- 
thing humorous  that  happens  within  these  cir- 
cles. Therefore,  German  humour  is  essentially 
a  humour  of  peasants  and  provincials — ^just  as 
was  formerly  English  and  French  humour  in 
a  corresponding  stage  of  historic  development. 
Germany  has  never  really  outgrown  that  semi- 
mediseval  stage.  Such  names,  however,  as  Ja- 
kob Kortum,  Wilhelm  Busch,  and  Fritz  Renter, 
which  stand  for  different  aspects  of  German  hu- 
mour at  its  best,  suggest  a  quality  of  mirth  as 
genuine  and  typical  as  the  French,  English,  or 
American  variety.  It  does  not  lack  depth  and 
shrewdness,  although  it  has  neither  the  quick  mo- 
tion and  directness  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  wit,  nor 
the  penetrating  intellectual  finesse  of  French 
esprit. 

Yet  the  mistaken   assumption   that   there  is 


116     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

no  sense  of  humour  in  Germany  is  quite  ex- 
cusable, for  the  classes  of  Germans  with  whom 
foreigners  were  most  hkely  to  come  in  contact 
are  just  those  that  live  outside  of  the  provincial 
circles  where  German  humour  has  its  roots.  They 
are  the  city  dwellers  and  more  particularly  the 
commercial  classes,  whose  conditions  of  hfe  have 
comparatively  recently  separated  them  from  the 
sources  of  sound  popular  humour,  without  yet 
creating  the  new  world  of  images,  tastes  and  in- 
tellectual traditions  which  could  inspire  up-to- 
date  drollery.  About  all  that  the  outside  world 
saw  of  Germany  were  these  classes,  whose  aver- 
age mentality  was  indeed  such  as  to  justify  the 
impression  that  every  German  was  a  bullying, 
bombastic,  blunt-witted,  tactless  and  unsports- 
manhke  person,  with  no  senSe  of  humour  beyond 
his  glee  in  brutality,  cruelty  or  obscenity.  There 
is  a  sense  of  humour  in  German  home-life  in  as 
far  as  it  resembles  that  of  the  peasant  or  artisan 
ancestry;  but  none  in  German  politics,  or  in  Ger- 
man warfare.  If  you  talk  to  an  officer  in  the 
Prussian  Guard,  you  will  find  that  the  only  sort 
of  humour  about  him  is  involuntary;  but  if  you 
have  a  friendly  chat  with  a  Swabian  peasant  or 
with  an  old  shoemaker  in  some  Bavarian  town- 
ship, you  will  many  a  time  discover  a  turn  of 
mind,  both  poetic  and  humorous,  that  will  make 
you  grasp  the  meaning  of  old  German  "Gemiit- 
Echkeit." 


VI 


GERMAN    MILITARISM 

Les  opinions  qui  different  de  I'esprit  dominant,  quel  qu'il  soit 
scandalisent  toujours  le  vulgaire:  I'etude  et  Texamen  peuvent 
seuls  donner  cette  Iib6ralit6  du  jugement,  sans  laquelle  il  est 
impossible  d'acqu^rir  des  lumieres  nouvelles,  ou  de  conserver 
m6me  celles  qu'on  a;  car  on  se  soumet  a  de  certaines  id6es  re?ues, 
non  comme  H  des  verites,  mais  comme  au  pouvoir;  et  c'est  ainsi 
que  la  raison  bumaine  s'babitue  k  la  servitude. 

Madame  de  Stael,  de  VAllemagne. 

The  utter  impossibility  of  a  theory  based  on 
the  stability  of  national  characteristics  becomes 
increasingly  obvious  as  soon  as  we  view  national- 
ity as  an  element  that  varies  with  time.  A  very 
few  examples  will  suffice  to  show  how  these  char- 
acteristics change  together  with  the  historic  con- 
ditions that  create  them. 

The  history  of  my  own  country  offers  a  par- 
ticularly striking  illustration.  Walloons  and 
Flemings  present  the  marked  contrast  of  two 
nationalities  with  the  opposite  mental  character- 
istics of  industrial  and  agricultural  Ufe.  The 
bulk  of  the  Walloon  population  lives  in  the  in- 
dustrial beehives  that  crowd  around  our  coal  dis- 
tricts; while  the  Flemings  are  essentially  agri- 
cultural. The  Walloons  will  tell  you  that  the 
Flemings  are  a  heavy,  slow  and  stubborn  race, 

U7 


118     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

with  a  conservative  mind,  whose  ignorance,  lack 
of  intellectual  independence  and  inclination  to 
mysticism  make  them  a  prey  to  the  most  back- 
ward forms  of  clericahsm.  And  in  fact,  Flan- 
ders is  a  stronghold  par  eoccellence  of  the  politi- 
cal and  social  power  of  Roman  Catholicism.  It 
holds  the  Belgian  record  of  ilUteracy  and  crimi- 
nahty:  practically  all  the  conservative  votes  are 
cast  in  what  the  Walloons  call  the  "black  dis- 
tricts" of  Flanders;  and  the  Flemish  country 
people  who  periodically  migrate  into  Walloon 
territory  to  do  unskilled  industrial  work  are 
looked  upon  almost  as  coolies  by  Walloon  labour. 
The  mentality  of  Walloon  Belgium,  on  the  other 
hand,  compares  with  that  of  Flanders  hke  Lan- 
cashire with  Ireland.  It  is  in  the  former  that 
all  the  progressive  movements  are  fostered; 
three-quarters  of  the  votes  cast  in  the  great 
Walloon  centres  of  the  mining,  metal,  textile 
and  glass  industry  are  for  the  Labour  Party; 
and  it  is  the  only  part  of  the  country  where 
agnosticism  and  protestantism  amount  to  any- 
thing. 

Neither  race  nor  language  has  anything  to  do 
with  this  contrast.  There  is  no  appreciable  dif- 
ference in  the  ethnological  origin  and  character- 
istics of  Flemings  and  Walloons;  the  Teutonic 
element  prevails  with  both.  True,  the  Flemings 
speak  the  same  language  as  the  Dutch,  and  the 
Walloons  as  the  French;  and  there  is,  in  conse- 


GERMAN    MILITARISM         119 

quence,  a  Germanic  influence  in  Flanders  and  a 
French  influence  in  Walloon  Belgium.  But  this 
does  not  at  all  account  for  the  difference  in  men- 
tality which  I  have  just  set  forth.  For  the  Dutch 
brethren  of  our  Catholic  Flemings  are  predomi- 
nantly Calvinists;  whilst  France  —  which  does 
not,  as  many  foreigners  believe,  mean  Paris — is 
a  Catholic  country,  where  the  conservative  psy- 
chology of  the  peasantry,  and  of  an  economically 
backward  provincial  petty  bourgeoisie,  is  as  pre- 
valent as  the  numerical  preponderance  of  these 
social  classes  in  the  body  of  the  nation  is  great. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  most  reactionary  and  in- 
tellectually backward  element  of  the  Belgian 
population  is  the  French-speaking  bourgeoisie  of 
Flanders.  When  I  add  that  in  those  few  Wal- 
loon districts  that  are  purely  agricultural,  the 
same  conservative  spirit  prevails  as  in  Flanders, 
whilst  in  Flanders  itself  there  is  a  progressive 
and  non-catholic  minority  that  is  practically  en- 
tirely confined  to  the  working  classes  of  the  few 
industrial  towns,  it  will  become  obvious  that  so- 
cial conditions  account  almost  exclusively  for  the 
difference  in  psychology  of  the  two  halves  of  the 
Belgian  population. 

But  then  these  mental  characteristics  are  no 
more  permanent  than  are  those  social  conditions 
themselves.  This  is  why  until  the  end  of  the  six- 
teenth century,  the  mental  attitude  of  Flemings 
and  Walloons  was  exactly  the  reverse  of  what  it 


120     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

is  at  present.  From  the  thirteenth  century  until 
that  time,  Flanders  was  a  hotbed  of  heresy  and 
revolutionism,  whilst  the  Walloon  provinces  were 
the  "black  districts"  of  poHtical  and  intellectual 
servility.  In  the  latter  part  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
when  all  other  European  countries  except  the 
Northern  Itahan  cities  were  still  the  thralls  of 
serfdom,  feudalism  and  popery,  the  Flemish 
cities  were  already  self-governing  democratic 
communities.  Their  internal  history  is  that  of 
an  uninterrupted  series  of  social  struggles,  in 
which  an  indomitable  spirit  of  independence  and 
political  radicahsm  manifested  itself.  Their  ex- 
ternal history  is  that  of  continuous  and  success- 
ful fighting  in  defence  of  their  democratic  insti- 
tutions against  those  feudal  powers  which,  like 
the  kings  and  the  aristocracy  of  France,  repre- 
sented the  spirit  of  political  conservatism;  whilst 
the  repeated  ban  of  the  Pope  bore  testimony  to 
the  persistence  of  their  rebellion  against  the  pow- 
ers of  spiritual  conservatism.  Even  the  peas- 
antry followed  the  example  of  the  communes  and 
freed  themselves  from  feudal  serfdom  five  hun- 
dred years  before  the  rest  of  Europe.  During 
all  that  time,  there  was  no  stir  of  life  in  the  land- 
lord- and  priest-ridden  Walloon  districts,  with 
the  exception  of  a  couple  of  isolated  industrial 
towns  like  Liege  and  Dinant.  When  the  great 
revolutionary  struggle  of  the  Netherlands  came 
to  its  climax  in  the  rebellion  against  the  clerical 


GERMAN   MILITARISM         121 

and  despotic  regime  of  the  Spanish  kings,  whose 
vicissitudes  fill  the  main  part  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  protestant,  democratic  and  revolution- 
ary Flanders  found  no  support  in  the  Walloon 
provinces.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  largely  (thanks 
to  the  assistance  they  lent)  to  the  Spanish  that 
the  rebellion  was  finally  drowned  in  blood.  Mass 
executions,  the  destruction  of  cities,  the  banish- 
ment or  voluntary  emigration  of  the  Protestants 
and  revolutionaries  marked  the  beginning  of  the 
long  period  of  decay  in  the  democratic  civilisation 
of  a  country  that  was  too  much  in  advance  of  the 
rest  of  Europe  to  be  allowed  to  live.  The  Flem- 
ings then  uttered  the  same  reproach  against  the 
Walloons,  as  the  Walloons  of  nowadays  formu- 
late against  the  Flemings,  namely,  that  they  were 
of  a  slow,  conservative,  backward,  servile  mind. 
And  they  were  just  about  as  right  as  the  Wal- 
loons are  now. 

How  could  the  mental  characteristics  of  a  pop- 
ulation suffer  such  a  complete  inversion  within 
a  lapse  of  time  of  less  than  three  hundred  years? 
Simply  because  the  social  and  industrial  condi- 
tions that  determine  them  have  been  likewise 
inverted.  Mediaeval  Flanders  was  industrial; 
media3val  WaUoonia  was  agricultural.  Flanders 
was  then  politically  and  intellectually  in  advance 
of  the  rest  of  Europe,  because  it  was  in  advance 
economically.  As  early  as  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury, more  than  three  quarters  of  the  population 


122    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

of  practically  every  Flemish  city  lived  mainly 
from  cloth-making.  This  semi-capitahst  indus- 
try, which  worked  for  the  export  trade,  was  as 
much  of  an  anomaly  in  the  relative  narrowness 
and  stagnation  of  mediaeval  economy  as  the  po- 
litical regime  of  the  Flemish  communes  was  in 
the  world  of  feudalism  and  autocracy.  The  Wal- 
loon provinces,  on  the  contrary,  were  still  in  the 
stage  of  agricultural  serfdom.  From  this  they 
sprang  into  that  of  great  capitahst  industry  in 
the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  when 
the  opening  of  the  era  of  the  steam-engine  cre- 
ated around  their  coal  fields  those  huge  industrial 
agglomerations  which  are  among  the  densest  in 
the  world. 

Since  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century,  on 
the  other  hand,  Flanders  has  seen  her  indus- 
trial prosperity  come  to  an  end  as  the  result 
both  of  the  opening  of  new  trade-routes  and 
of  the  exhaustion  of  her  population  through  dis- 
astrous social  and  political  struggles.  She  be- 
came an  agricultural  country  once  more,  with 
nothing  to  remind  her  of  the  former  splendour 
of  her  urban  economic  life  but  her  cathedrals,  bel- 
fries, town-  and  guild-halls — and  the  dejection 
of  the  people  who  lived  in  their  shadow  and  be- 
came a  prey  to  unexampled  pauperism,  which 
was  at  the  same  time  solaced  and  perpetuated  by 
the  Catholic  Church  and  her  convents. 

The  history  of  the  German  nation  itself,  al- 


GERMAN    MILITARISM         123 

though  it  shows  no  such  complete  inversion  of 
national  characteristics,  abounds  in  examples  of 
profound  modifications  within  a  few  generations' 
time. 

I  might  refer  the  reader  back  to  my  analysis 
of  German  sense  of  humour,  which  shows  that  at 
the  time  when  all  great  European  nations  lived 
under  the  economic  regime  of  peasantry  and 
small  artisanship — namely^  until  the  beginning 
of  modern  history — there  was  not  the  same  dif- 
ference as  at  present  between  the  characteristics 
of  the  German  nation  and  those  of  her  western 
neighbours.  In  the  Middle  Ages  the  hterary  and 
artistic  expression  of  the  popular  soul  was  as  uni- 
form in  countries  like  Southern  and  Western 
Germany,  France,  England,  the  Netherlands, 
etc.,  as  were  the  social  conditions  themselves. 
Their  feudal  aristocracy  had  its  common  mental 
characteristics,  tastes  and  fashions,  including  the 
sense  of  humour,  as  evidenced  by  the  internation- 
ality  of  such  institutions  as  the  troubadours,  min- 
strels and  jesters.  On  the  other  hand,  the  uni- 
versal popularity,  and  the  universal  origin  even, 
of  the  main  poetic  works,  the  folk-songs  and  the 
mystic  literature  of  that  time  bear  witness  to  the 
psychological  similarity  of  the  common  people. 
The  association  of  Germany  with  such  universal 
expressions  of  plebeian  humour  as  the  Historye 
of  Reynard  the  Fooce — Roman  du  Renard — 
Reinaert  de  Vos — Reineke  Fuchs,  or  as  the  OwU 


124     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

glass — Ulespiegle — Tij  I  Uylespieghel — Eulen- 
spiegelj  is  striking  evidence  that  the  Teutonic 
humour  was  then  on  a  level  with  that  of  other 
countries.  The  differentiation  only  began  later, 
when  new  economic  conditions  created  national- 
ity in  its  modern  sense. 

The  exceptions  to  the  rule  of  the  universality 
of  mediaeval  literature  only  strengthen  the  argu- 
ment. They  are  practically  confined  to  the  free 
bourgeois  cities  of  Northern  Italy  and  Flanders. 
Their  early,  hothouse-capitalism  created  the  con- 
ditions that  made  the  beginnings  of  modern  na- 
tional poetry,  art  and  literature  possible. 

But  we  need  not  go  back  to  the  Middle  Ages 
nor  confine  ourselves  to  the  controversial  ground 
of  hterary  taste,  to  find  proofs  of  the  transforma- 
tion of  the  German  mind.  It  is  fashionable  now- 
adays to  explain  the  hold  of  military,  autocratic 
and  intellectual  discipline  on  the  German  people, 
to  a  racial  disposition,  inherent  to  the  German 
spirit.  As  far  as  contemporary  Germany  is  con- 
cerned, I  shall  be  the  last  to  dispute  the  postulate 
that,  if  ever  there  was  anything  to  characterise 
the  mentahty  of  a  nation,  authority-worship  is  a 
characteristic  of  the  German  people.  It  applies 
to  the  soldier,  who  stands  brutalities  from  his  su- 
periors to  which  no  other  white  men  would  sub- 
mit without  immediate  retaliation;  as  well  as  to 
the  scholar,  who  thinks  that  scientific  research 
consists  in  the  compilation  of  "authorities";  or  to 


GERMAN    MILITARISM         125 

the  Social-Democrat,  who,  like  Hugo  Haase  in 
the  Reichstag  on  the  4th  of  August,  1914,  put 
party  discipline  above  his  own  honour  by  reading, 
as  the  president  of  his  group,  its  historic  declara- 
tion in  favour  of  the  war-credits,  just  after  he 
had  opposed  this  very  policy,  in  the  party  caucus, 
as  a  betrayal  of  all  Socialist  principles. 

The  Belgian  historian,  Henri  Pirenne,  whose 
patriotic  attitude  during  the  occupation  caused 
him  to  be  deported  to  Germany,  has  told  me  of 
some  of  the  talks  he  used  to  have  with  the  peas- 
ants of  Kreuzburg,  a  township  where  he  had  been 
a  prisoner  for  several  months.  He  was  allowed 
to  go  about  in  the  town,  and  the  Belgian  Herr 
Professor  had  soon  become  a  local  institution.  He 
indulged  in  frequent  discussions  of  the  war  with 
the  natives,  in  order  to  gain  some  insight  into 
their  psychology.  His  conclusion,  he  said,  was 
always  the  same:  "My  dear  Herr  Nachbar,  we 
cannot  understand  each  other;  for  your  grand- 
father was  a  serf,  whilst  I  come  from  a  country 
where  there  was  no  serfdom  left  after  the  thir- 
teenth century;  in  the  particular  place  where  my 
family  comes  from  (the  village  of  Franchimont) 
it  never  even  existed."  No  wonder,  then,  that 
Freiherr  von  Bissing,  the  late  German  governor 
of  occupied  Belgium,  called  the  Belgian  mind 
"a  psychological  problem." 

Some  of  the  friends  I  had  in  pre-war  Germany 
may  condescend  to  excuse  me  for  having  taken 


126     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

up  arms  against  them,  but  if  I  am  to  judge  by 
what  their  papers  wrote  at  the  time,  I  am  afraid 
they  wiU  never  forgive  that  in  June,  1917,  in  an 
address  to  Russian  soldiers,  I  spoke  of  the  Ger- 
man people  as  having  "souls  of  slaves."  Yet 
everything  I  see  happening  in  Germany  up  to 
this  day,  even  in  the  German  RepubUe  by  the 
Grace  of  Foch,  convinces  me  more  and  more  of 
the  truth  of  what  I  said  then,  namely,  that  in  a 
country  so  void  of  democratic  traditions  and  rev- 
olutionary spirit  as>  Germany,  people  do  not  even 
understand  the  meaning  of  a  freedom  which  they 
have  never  tasted.  There  are  quite  a  few  Ger- 
mans who  have  realised  that  too,  and  said  it  less 
politely,  though  perhaps  more  adequately.  Heine 
calls  a  spade  a  spade  when  he  says : 

Es  fehlt  dem  Deutschen  zum  Hunde  nur 
Ein  richtiger  Schweif  zum  wedeln.  * 

The  two  founders  of  German  social-democ- 
racy, August  Rebel  and  Wilhelm  Liebknecht, 
must  likewise  have  reahsed  this.  At  any  rate, 
they  used  to  comment  bitterly  on  the  lack  of  grit 
in  their  own  following  since  social-democracy  had 
outgrown  its  early  heroic  stage  and  become  a 
mere  cog  in  the  wheel  of  contemporary  capitalist 
and  militarist  Germany.  There  was  the  same 
difference  between  the  moral  calibre  of  Rebel's 
and  Liebknecht's  generation  and  that  of  Scheide- 

*  All  that  a  German  lacks  to  be  a  dog  is  a  tail  to  wag. 


GERMAN    MILITARISM  127 

mann's  and  Noske's  as  there  was  between  the 
international  policy  of  social-democracy  in  1871, 
when  Rebel  and  Liebknecht  went  to  prison  for 
protesting  against  the  annexation  of  Alsace-Lor- 
raine, and  that  of  1914-18,  when  social-democ- 
racy declared  itself  in  favour  of  a  plebiscite  in 
these  two  provinces — after  they  had  been  occu- 
pied by  Foch. 

I  remember  Rebel — ^the  "old  lion,"  as  he  was 
then  called — at  the  Congress  of  the  Social-Demo- 
cratic party  in  Jena  in  1905,  using  the  same  word 
as  Heine  when  he  referred  to  the  submissiveness 
of  the  German  workers.  It  was  just  after  the 
ruling  classes  in  several  cities,  like  Hamburg, 
Dresden  and  Liibeck,  had  changed  the  local  suf- 
frage system  so  as  to  deprive  labour  of  any 
chance  to  become  a  majority.  ^  As  in  Saxony  in 
1897,  when  the  three-class  system  of  voting  was 
introduced,  there  had  only  been  a  platonic  and 
ineffective  protest.  Rebel  contrasted  this  atti- 
tude with  the  Russian  revolution,  which  had  then 
just  reached  its  chmax,  and  with  the  efforts  of 
the  Relgian  workers  who,  in  1893  and  1902,  had 
conquered  extensions  of  the  suffrage  with  the 
help  of  the  general  strike.  "We  are  far  behind 
the  bourgeoisie  of  previous  centuries,"  he  said; 
"for  it  has  continuously  struggled  for  the  main- 
tenance of  its  liberties ;  whilst  we  seem  to  be  in- 
different when  we  are  robbed  of  our  right  to  vote 
and  submissively  receive  lash  upon  lash  across 


128     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

our  backs."  When  his  passionate  outburst  cul- 
minated in  the  self -accusation,  "Hunde  sind  wir 
ja  doch!"  (What  hounds  we  are!)  the  audience 
applauded  with  fury,  not  knowing  the  extent  to 
which,  ten  years  later  they  were  to  prove  the 
truth  of  the  indictment. 

Karl  Liebknecht  on  the  other  hand  often  told 
me  how  he  had  inherited  his  hatred  of  German 
serviUty  from  his  father,  Wilhelm,  who  used  to 
say  that  he  thought  the  Germans  constitutionally 
unable  to  undertake  anything  that  was  "ver- 
boten"  by  the  pohce,  even  though  it  were  a  rev- 
olution. Wilhelrti  Liebknecht  used  to  say  to  his 
son  that  although  from  1878  till  1890  (when  the 
Bismarckian  policy  practically  outlawed  the  so- 
cialists), they  had  been  compelled  secretly  to 
evade  the  law  and  disobey  the  police,  they  did  so 
with  a  heavy  heart  and  without  showing  any 
capacity  for  conspiring  against  authority. 

Nevertheless,  to  explain  German  mihtarism 
and  despotism  by  this  psychological  feature  is  to 
mistake  the  cause  for  the  effect.  One  need  not 
go  very  far  back  in  the  history  of  Germany  to 
find  that,  when  other  social  and  political  condi- 
tions prevailed,  the  mentality  of  the  German 
people  was  different  as  well.  Those  who  believe 
in  a  permanent  and  constitutional,  or  even  racial 
inability  of  the  Germans  to  revolt  against  ty- 
ranny, forget  that  in  the  Middle  Ages  and  at  the 
beginning  of  modern  times,  the  German  cities 


GERMAN    MILITARISM  129 

like  Cologne,  Strassburg,  Constance,  Nuremberg 
and  many  others  have  been  the  theatre  of  as  rev- 
olutionary popular  risings  as  those  of  any  other 
places  abroad  where  the  social  conditions  were 
similar.  They  forget  that  the  great  rebellion  of 
the  German  peasantry  in  the  first  half  of  the  six- 
teenth century,  though  it  did  not  achieve  any 
more  lasting  political  results  than  did  the  similar 
movements  in  France  or  England,  could  well 
compare  with  them  in  intensity  and  determina- 
tion. And  above  all,  they  forget  that  the  world 
owes  to  the  German  people  the  fruits  of  a  gigan- 
tic revolutionary  struggle  that  ranks,  with  the 
English  revolution  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
and  the  American  and  French  revolutions  of  the 
eighteenth,  amongst  the  great  achievements  that 
have  founded  modern  democratic  civilisation :  the 
Lutheran  Reformation.  Where  was  then  the 
slavishness  of  the  German  mind. 

Some  theorists  of  national  hatred,  especially 
amongst  the  French  and  the  Belgians,  have  said 
that  the  German  nation  should  be  wiped  out,  be- 
cause it  is  psychologically  unable  to  conceive,  or 
to  adapt  itself  to,  a  pohtical  regime  other  than 
that  of  centralised  autocratic  power.  This  is  not 
even  correct  as  far  as  contemporary  conditions 
are  concerned. 

True,  there  has  been  in  Germany  since  1871, 
and  especially  within  the  last  twenty  years  of  its 
rapid  industrial  progress  a  marked  propensity  to 


130    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

create  strongly  centralised  Institutions.  Indus- 
trial enterprises,  banking  concerns,  labour  unions, 
employers'  associations,  political  parties,  official 
insurance  bodies,  intellectual  groupings,  all  had 
this  feature  in  common  that  they  had  invested 
their  leading  organs  with  an  intensely  centrahsed 
power.  This,  by  the  way,  is  not  a  pecuharly 
German  feature.  It  is  inseparable  from  indus- 
trial progress  in  any  country  where  this  progress 
is  rapid  and  unhampered  by  survivals  of  previ- 
ous stages.  Some  of  the  economic  institutions  in 
Anglo-Saxon  America,  for  instance,  are  at  least 
as  centralised  as  similar  institutions  in  Germany. 
And  I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  the  lack  of  central- 
isation in  most  fields  of  the  economic  life  in 
France  or  Belgium  is  a  token  of  higher  develop- 
ment. 

But  if  we  consider  the  pohtical  institutions  of 
Germany,  we  find  that  they  are  much  less  cen- 
trahsed than  the  French,  or  than  those  of  any 
other  great  civilised  country,  with  the  exception 
of  the  United  States.  The  German  Empire  is 
a  federal  body,  both  in  its  constitution  and  in  its 
administration;  there  is  a  much  greater  local 
autonomy  in  provincial  or  municipal  matters 
than  in  France.  The  latter  country  has  been  fet- 
tered by  Napoleon  with  a  system  of  bureaucratic 
'  centralisation  which  the  best  minds  of  the  coun- 
try consider  as  a  cause  not  only  of  economic  back- 
wardness, but  also  of  a  state  of  mind  character- 


GERMAN    MILITARISM         131 

ised  by  the  fear  of  initiative  and  responsibility 
that  results  from  overconfidence  in  the  divin- 
ity of  the  State.  Universities,  and  educational 
institutions  generally,  enjoy  an  incomparably 
larger  autonomy  in  Germany  than  in  France  or 
Belgium,  and  have  much  more  pronounced  indi- 
vidual features. 

If  we  look  back  into  the  past,  we  shall  find 
that  until  recently  German  institutions  were  any- 
thing but  centralised,  and  the  spirit  of  the  Ger- 
man nation  anything  but  prone  to  give  up  pro- 
vincial, local  or  individual  rights.  Worship  of 
centralisation  is  as  modern  there  as  centrahsa- 
tion  itself.  Until  the  creation  of  the  German 
Empire,  1871 — for  the  mediaeval  or  post-medise- 
val  empire  was  never  anything  but  a  loose  fed- 
eration of  princes — there  was  but  one  sphere  of 
German  life  where  centralisation  reigned:  the 
Prussian  army  and  bureaucracy.  And  even  this 
dates  back  no  further  than  to  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century. 

It  is  not  German  authority-worship  that  has 
created  German  militarism;  it  is  German  mili- 
tarism that  has  created  German  authority-wor- 
ship. And  German  militarism  is  the  work  of 
Prussia;  and  Prussian  militarism  is  the  outcome 
of  economic  and  political  conditions  that  date 
back  to  the  Thirty  Years'  War. 

Until  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
there  was  not  even  such  a  thing  as  Prussian  mili- 


132    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

tarism  in  the  sense  we  now  attach  to  this  word, 
namely,  a  permeation  of  the  institutions  and  in- 
tellectual hf  e  of  a  country  with  the  hierarchic  and 
warlike  spirit  of  a  permanent  military  organisa- 
tion. Prussia  itself  was  but  a  small  part  of  the 
German  nation.  Its  armed  power  was  very  lim- 
ited and,  as  in  all  other  monarchies  and  princi- 
palities of  the  period,  consisted  of  a  small  force 
of  mercenaries  officered  by  the  aristocracy.  Yet 
conditions  in  Prussia  were  such  as  to  make  a  real 
militarisation  of  the  country  possible.  It  was  the 
task  that  tempted  the  two  Fredericks  and  whicK 
they  successfully  achieved.  The  Prussian  soil 
was  barren  and  the  population  poor;  there  were 
practically  no  cities,  and  the  feudal  system  had 
been  maintained  in  all  its  original  harshness  by 
the  Junkers,  who,  however,  on  their  arid  estates 
did  not  prosper  very  much  more  than  their  peas- 
ants. But  they  owed  a  warlike  disposition  to 
their  descent  from  the  colonists  who  had  con- 
quered this  originally  Slav  country;  they  dis- 
posed of  plenty  of  horses  and  of  the  human  res- 
ervoir of  a  strong,  hardy,  prolific  and  hungry 
race,  used  to  obedience  through  generations  of 
serfdom,  and  all  the  more  wilUng  to  obey  in  war 
as  they  had  little  to  lose  by  absenting  themselves 
from  their  miserable  homes. 

Yet  Prussia  would  never  have  become  more 
than  a  small  robber  state  like  many  another  in 
Eastern  Europe,  if  the  Thirty  Years'  War  had 


GERMAN    MILITARISM  133 

not  created  circumstances  in  the  more  civilised 
and  fertile  part  of  Germany  that  made  her  an 
easy  prey  to  the  greed  of  the  Prussian  Junkers. 
This  war  had  left  Germany  almost  as  devasta- 
ted, demoralised  and  divided  as  the  revolution 
against  Spain  had  left  Belgium  a  century  before. 
Small  and  poor  though  it  was,  Prussia  yet  repre- 
sented, at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  a 
power  more  considerable  than  that  of  any  other 
political  or  military  body  in  the  mass  of  petty 
principahties  that  then  made  up  Germany. 

Prussia's  first  real  chance  came  in  1813.  Ger- 
many had  been  invaded  and  occupied  by  Napo- 
leon's armies.  For  the  first  time  since  the  Refor- 
mation a  national  spirit  again  manifested  itself. 
It  was  the  indomitable  desire  of  a  people  not  to 
live  imder  a  foreign  despot's  rule  and  pay  the 
price  of  his  wars  with  its  own  wealth  and  blood. 
When  the  call  to  armed  resistance  came,  it  found 
a  ready  instrument  in  the  Prussian  army.  True, 
this  instrument  had  proved  worthless  at  Jena  in 
1806  against  the  concentrated  and  self-confident 
power  of  a  really  national  army;  but  that  les- 
son of  ignominious  defeat  had  not  been  wasted. 
Prussia's  mercenary  organisation  was  replaced 
by  a  popular  army,  based  on  compulsory  gen- 
eral enlistment,  whose  creation  the  popular  en- 
thusiasm for  a  war  of  national  liberation  had 
made  possible. 

This  was  the  beginning  of  Prussian  hegemony 


134    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

over  Germany.  It  could  not,  however,  be  con- 
summated immediately  after  the  war  was  over, 
as  there  was  not  then  the  same  imperious  need 
for  complete  political  unification  as  there  was  in 
France  or  England.  Germany  was  still  in  the 
agricultural  and  artisan  stage  of  local  and  pro- 
vincial economy.  Its  slowly  rising  commercial 
and  industrial  bourgeoisie,  who  needed  national 
unity  for  their  expansion,  and  its  intellectual 
class,  who  were  still  inspired  with  the  patriotic 
enthusiasm  of  1813,  were  too  weak  a  minority 
to  prevail  against  the  power  ^  of  inertia  of  the 
princes.  An  attempt  undertaken  in  1848,  under 
the  influence  of  the  Paris  revolution,  to  create  a 
democratic  national  state,  failed  miserably. 

Another  national  war  was  required  to  enable 
Prussia  to  gather  the  fruits  of  1813.  Bismarck, 
the  typical  representative  of  the  Junker  class, 
prepared  it.  It  was  won  in  1870-71,  after  the 
prelude  of  the  war  with  Austria,  thanks  to  the 
efficiency  of  the  Prussian  army  and  administra- 
tion. The  Prussian  Junker  stood  godfather  to 
the  Empire.  It  has  remained  true  to  the  aus- 
pices under  which  it  was  born.  The  Great  War 
was  the  ultimate  outcome  of  the  permeation  of 
the  German  nation  with  the  spirit  of  militarism 
and  submissiveness  to  its  lords,  which  three  or 
four  generations  had  sufficed  to  instil. 

The  links  of  this  historic  development  are  so 
obvious  that  no  mythical  explanation  by  a  racial 


GERMAN    MILITARISM  135 

disposition  towards  servility  is  required.  Ger- 
man national  psychology,  as  it  was  since  the 
Thirty  Years'  War,  was  related  to  the  original 
causes  of  the  development  of  Prussian  militarism 
only  in  so  far  as  the  mentality  of  any  population 
of  poor  and  ignorant  peasants — used  to  tradi- 
tional submission  to  their  landlords — ^will  always 
make  them  suitable  raw  material  of  soldiers,  ir- 
respective of  race  or  nationality.  Exactly  the 
same  causes  created  mihtarism  in  Russia,  the 
Hapsburg  monarchies,  the  Bulgarian  States,  and 
in  Japan,  with  similar  psychological  results. 

Whilst  the  characteristics  of  race  remain  prac- 
tically permanent  within  any  historical  period, 
those  of  nationahty  may  change  within  one  or 
two  generations.  There  is  striking  evidence  of 
this  in  the  ease  with  which  the  first  generation 
bom  on  American  soil  of  immigrants  of  any 
European  nationality  becomes  Americanised, 
provided  that  it  really  lives  under  American  con- 
ditions and  not  in  a  colony  or  ghetto  which  is  but 
an  annex  of  the  original  fatherland. 

Most  of  the  characteristics  of  contemporary 
Germany  which  every  free  civilised  man  has  such 
good  reasons  to  abhor  have  been  acquired  within 
the  last  two  generations.  To  me  they  appear  to 
be  due,  not  only  to  the  influence  of  militarism, 
but  altogether  to  the  peculiar  circumstances  of 
the  over-rapid  development  of  German  capital- 
ism.   It  should  be  kept  in  mind  that  until  the  last 


136     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century,  Germany  was 
a  predominantly  agricultural  country,  with  a 
peasantry  that  had  so  recently  been  freed  from 
feudal  serviUty  that  it  had  had  no  time  to  lose 
the  mental  characteristics  of  this  system.  By  an 
abrupt  transition,  in  less  than  a  generation,  it  be- 
came a  great  industrial  country  of  the  first  order. 
Now  a  country  may  within  thirty  years  develop 
from  a  nation  of  serfs  into  a  nation  of  capitalists 
and  industrial  workmen;  but  it  cannot  within 
such  a  short  space  of  time  evolve  industrial 
civihsation  and  the  higher  forms  and  traditions 
of  political  and  spiritual  life  that  correspond  to 
it. 

England  and  Germany  are  about  on  an  equal 
level  of  capitalist  development.  But  the  English 
mind  has  the  culture  that  corresponds  to  it  be- 
cause it  has  had  three  centuries  in  which  to  form 
it;  the  German  mind  has  not.  This  is  why  in  the 
native  country  of  the  Hymn  of  Hate  and  ''Gott 
strafe  England^  the  upper  classes,  in  spite  of 
their  proclaimed  contempt  for  the  "nation  of 
shopkeepers"  across  the  North  Sea,  made  such 
hopelessly  funny  and  funnily  hopeless  attempts 
at  looking  like  Englishmen.  The  more  a  par- 
venu tries  to  look  smart,  the  more  he  looks  a  par- 
venu. This  showed  itself  not  in  fashion  alone, 
but  in  the  whole  mental  and  moral  attitude  of 
the  German  upper  classes,  whose  sudden  pros- 
perity had  gone  to  their  heads.    It  made  the  dom- 


GERMAN    MILITARISM  137 

inant  philosophy  of  the  German  nation — which 
until  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  had 
been  idealistic  and  ethical — materialistic  and  util- 
itarian. During  my  stay  at  German  universities, 
I  have  often  been  struck  by  the  contrast  between 
the  spirit  of  what  was  left  of  the  old  idealistic 
generation,  as  represented  by  some  of  the  pro- 
fessors, and  that  of  the  students,  whose  coarsely 
materialistic  outlook  on  life  and  unabashed  revel- 
ling in  every  form  of  physical  and  intellectual 
brutality  gave  me  a  foretaste  of  what  a  German 
invasion  would  mean.  Amongst  the  older  pro- 
fessors and  their  generation  in  general,  I  have 
known  a  few  men  of  as  fine  and  gentlemanly  a 
character  as  may  be  met  anj^where  in  the  world, 
even  though  they  did  not  try  to  knot  their  ties 
like  EngUshmen  or  to  produce  * 'tooth-brush" 
moustaches  like  Americans.  But  I  found  none 
amongst  the  future  reserve-officers  of  Hinden- 
burg's  army  who  did  not  illustrate  the  truth  of 
the  saying  that  the  only  thing  Germany  never 
succeeded  in  making  out  of  coal-tar  is  a  gentle- 
man. I  saw  another  proof  of  the  fact  that  over- 
rapid  capitalist  development  had  shaken  the 
moral  foundations  of  the  nation,  in  the  appalling 
extension  of  perversity  and  of  immorality  not 
merely  in  the  conventional,  but  in  the  true  eth- 
ical sense  of  the  word.  It  seemed  to  me  to  be  the 
consequence  of  the  natural  inability  of  the  nerves 
and  the  conscience  of  a  people  who  had  been  liv- 


138     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

ing  for  generations  in  old-fashioned  humdrum 
social  surroundings,  to  adapt  themselves  sud- 
denly to  the  dizzy  rhythm  of  super-modern  capi- 
taUsm,  with  its  unbinding  of  the  traditional  ties 
of  a  sedentary  homelif e  and  its  unbridhng  of  new 
needs^  appetites  and  ambitions. 

Now  a  similar  rupture  of  the  moral  equiUb- 
rium  is  bound  to  happen  wherever  similar  social 
causes  prevail.  There  are  many  instances  of  it 
outside  of  Germany,  in  other  historical  epochs, 
and  even  in  ours.  What,  however,  made  Ger- 
many's case  worse,  not  only  for  herself,  but  for 
the  rest  of  the  world,  is  that  these  causes  were 
not  counterbalanced  by  the  self-adjusting  influ- 
ence of  adaptable  pohtical  institutions  and  the 
self -educating  effect  of  political  freedom  and  de- 
mocracy. The  spirit  of  Germany's  government 
was  hardly  more  than  the  transposition  of  a  miU- 
tary  hierarchy  and  discipline  into  the  plane  of 
political  institutions.  The  tragedy  of  the  sudden 
growth  of  German  capitalism  out  of  semi-feudal 
conditions  was  that  German  capitalism  had 
adapted  semi-feudal  institutions  to  its  purpose. 
This  purpose  was  double:  to  keep  the  lower 
classes  down,  and  to  conquer  the  world  (as  was 
so  nicely  expressed  by  the  German  military  ter- 
minology which  used  to  refer  to  the  "interior 
enemy"  and  the  "exterior  enemy") .  But  the  in- 
strument was  single:  miUtarism. 

I  have  never  ceased  to  be  convinced  that  the 


GERMAN   MILITARISM         139 

war  which  had  resulted  from  this  system  could 
only  end  by  its  destruction.  And  thereon  I 
based  my  hope  that  Germany,  freed  from  a  sys- 
tem that  had  turned  what  was  once  a  true  and 
kindly  people  into  an  object  of  deserved  execra- 
tion by  the  whole  world,  might  once  again  become 
a  nation  of  poets  and  thinkers,  worthy  to  lay 
claim  on  the  inspiration  of  Luther,  Kant,  Goethe 
and  Beethoven. 

So  let  us  hate  without  moderation,  where  mod- 
eration would  be  weakness,  but  with  discrimina- 
tion; hate  the  German  system  with  all  the  capac- 
ity of  our  souls  for  passion;  hate  it  even  outside 
of  Germany,  wherever  the  spirit  of  militarism, 
submissiveness  to  despotism,  class-egoism  and 
brutal  materialism  is  to  be  found — and  we  shall 
often  find  it  nearer  to  ourselves  than  we  imagine. 
But  to  hate  the  eternal  soul  of  a  nation,  strug- 
gling hke  all  others  from  darkness  to  light,  from 
crime  to  virtue,  is  to  fall  into  the  very  error  that 
has  proved  so  fatal  to  Germany  herself. 

I  had  never  imagined  that  the  ruling  classes  of 
Germany  would  act  any  better  than  they  did 
when  the  beast  of  German  militarism  was  event- 
ually let  loose.  But,  like  most  socialists  abroad, 
I  had  erred  in  my  favourable  judgment  of  Ger- 
man social-democracy.  The  revision  of  this 
judgment  in  the  light  of  facts  was  one  of  my 
main  preoccupations  during  the  first  stage  of  the 
war,  and  it  put  my  whole  conception  of  socialism 


140     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

to  a  test  that  upset  my  belief  in  many  idols  which 
I  now  found  false. 

I  was  known  in  the  Belgian  movement  not 
only  as  a  great  admirer,  but  even  as  a  promoter 
of  the  methods  of  German  social-democracy. 
Two  years  before  the  war,  I  had  been  almost  ex- 
pelled from  the  Belgian  Labour  Party  for  my 
criticism  of  its*  opportunist  short-sightedness  and 
lack  of  a  clear  doctrinal  conception,  a  criticism 
largely  inspired  by  my  admiration  of  the  clear- 
cut  rigidity  of  German  social-democratic  policy 
and  its  permeation  with  orthodox  Marxianism. 
The  Belgian  Committee  for  Workers'  Educa- 
tion, which  I  had  spent  three  years  in  setting  on 
foot,  had  been  modelled  on  the  example  of  the 
German  Arbeiterbildungsausschuss,  As  an  ad- 
visory member  of  the  executive  of  the  Belgian 
Federation  of  Trade  Unions,  I  had  successfully 
promoted  a  system  of  national  centralisation,  or- 
ganisation by  industries,  and  federative  relations 
between  the  trade  unions  and  the  Labour  Party, 
copied  from  the  German  model.  I  had  collected 
a  considerable  amount  of  money  for  an  insti- 
tution that  allowed  intelligent  young  Belgian 
workmen  to  spend  a  few  months  in  Germany,  to 
study  German  industrial  and  trade  union  meth- 
ods on  the  spot.  I  had  organised  and  conducted 
three  extensive  tours  of  Belgian  trade  union  and 
Labour  Party  officials  to  Berlin  and  other  Ger- 
man cities,  with  the  avowed  purpose  of  convert- 


GERMAN    MILITARISM         141 

ing  them  to  the  superiority  of  the  German  plan 
of  the  labour  movement.  Many  of  these  things 
I  do  not  regret  in  the  least.  I  am  still  as  con- 
vinced as  I  was  then  of  the  superiority,  in  any 
highly  developed  capitaKst  country,  of  central- 
ised industrial  labour  unions  over  the  old  system 
of  local  craft  unionism.  I  still  believe  that  Ger- 
many, in  the  field  of  the  labour  movement  like 
in  all  others,  was  right  in  giving  as  much  atten- 
tion as  she  did  to  education,  and  that  all  we  can 
reproach  her  with  in  this  connection  is  that  she 
used  this  education  for  a  wrong  aim.  And  I  do 
not  think  that  any  of  the  Belgian  labour  unions 
or  similar  institutions  which  have  adopted  the 
methods  of  organisation  which  my  "pro-Ger- 
man" propaganda  had  contributed  to  popularise 
have  ever  had  any  reason  to  regret  it, 

A  Belgian  general  under  whose  orders  I  have 
served,  and  who  knew  of  my  pre-war  activities, 
one  day  teasingly  asked  me  whether  I  was  not 
sorry  for  having  organised  tours  of  Belgian 
trade-unionists  to  study  German  methods.  "Not 
in  the  least,  sir,"  I  answered;  "my  only  regret  is 
that  I  could  not  organize  similar  tours  for  our 
generals."  The  general  changed  the  subject. 
He  had  particularly  good  reasons  to  know  that 
many  things  might  have  taken  another  turn  in 
1914  if  the  bulk  of  our  officers  had  then  been  up 
to  the  Berlin  standard  in  strategy  and  science  of 
organisation. 


142     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

Yet  I  am  all  the  more  ready  to  confess  that  I 
have  been  cruelly  disappointed  in  my  rehance 
on  what  German  labour  would  be  able  to  achieve, 
thanks  to  its  excellent  methods  of  organisation 
and  thorough  theoretical  training. 

It  did  not  take  me  long  to  realise  that  what  was 
wrong  with  German  social-democracy  was  due 
to  deeper  causes  than  the  shortcomings  of  its 
leaders.  The  bankruptcy  of  a  tradesman  can  be 
explained  by  his  individual  incapacity  to  carry 
on  his  business ;  but  it  is  as  f  ooUsh  to  explain  the 
failure  of  German  labour  to  oppose  the  aggres- 
sive imperialist  policy  of  their  government,  by 
the  stupidity,  cowardice  or  treason  of  their  lead- 
ers, as  it  is  to  consider  the  bolshevik  movement 
in  Russia  as  the  consequence  of  Lenine  and 
Trotzky  being  bribed  by  German  gold.  Surely 
it  is  hard  to  imagine  anything  worse  than  the  lack 
of  insight  and  character  shown  by  the  leaders  of 
German  social-democracy  on  the  4th  of  August 
and  thereafter;  but  their  appalhng  mediocrity 
and  dastardhness  were  but  a  reflex  of  the  men- 
tahty  of  the  masses  they  represented. 

From  my  knowledge,  which  is  fairly  intimate, 
of  conditions  and  people  in  the  German  labour 
movement,  and  my  passionate  study,  through  the 
reading  of  their  papers  and  hterature,  of  their 
attitude  during  the  war,  I  have  never  had  the 
sHghtest  doubt  that  the  entire  mass  of  the  Ger- 
man working  classes,  with  the  extremely  few  ex- 


GERMAN    MILITARISM         143 

ceptions  of  those  that  did  not  follow  the  majority 
social-democrats,  are  responsible  for  the  attitude 
of  their  leaders  on  and  after  the  4th  of  August, 
1914.  If  there  ever  was  a  case  where  the  leaders 
— and  poor  leaders  they  were  anyway — were  led 
by  the  masses,  this  was  one.  The  war  was  not 
the  Kaisers;  it  was  the  German  people's  war. 
Until  they  got  sobered  by  irremediable  defeat, 
they  were  all  united  by  a  common  purpose. 

When  the  rulers  of  Germany  started  the  war, 
they  indeed  succeeded  in  making  the  nation  be- 
lieve that  it  was  a  war  of  national  defence.  But 
the  sheepishness  with  which  the  social-democratic 
leaders,  on  the  4th  of  August,  1914,  swallowed 
the  most  transparent  pretexts  for  war  used 
by  the  government,  showed  that  they  were  glad 
enough  to  avail  themselves  of  these  excuses  for 
paying  no  attention  to  the  violation  of  Belgium 
in  their  zeal  to  hypnotise  the  masses  with  the  fear 
of  the  Cossacks.  Yet  these  same  social-demo- 
crats, who  had  previously  made  the  faithlessness 
of  the  Hohenzollerns  a  popular  byword,  had 
plenty  of  reasons  to  mistrust  their  government. 

As  soon  as  the  masses  themselves  saw  that  the 
war  promised  to  end  with  crushing  victory,  they 
became  intoxicated  with  the  desire,  which  had 
been  that  of  the  rulers  from  the  beginning,  to  use 
it  as  a  means  to  estabhsh  a  mihtary  hegemony 
by  Germany  over  the  world.  Never  during  the 
war  has  the  policy  of  the  majority  social-demo- 


lU    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

crats,  who  undoubtedly  represented  the  practi- 
cal unanimity  of  German  labour,  pursued  any 
other  aim  than  to  help  Kaiserism  to  achieve  this 
purpose.  All  their  theoretical  assertions  about 
the  capitahst  origin  of  the  war,  all  their  jere- 
miads about  the  impossibility  to  develop  demo- 
cratic institutions  in  Germany  as  long  as  its  fron- 
tiers were  threatened  by  a  world  intent  on  its 
destruction,  were  but  camouflage.  They  did  not 
hide  the  fact  that  whenever  Germany's  strategi- 
cal position  was  favourable,  the  Social-Demo- 
crats kept  quietly  in  the  background  and  joined 
in  the  pseans  of  victory ;  whilst  as  soon  as  affairs 
took  an  unfavourable  turn,  they  volunteered  to 
do  the  dirty  jobs  of  imperial  diplomacy,  by  ad- 
vocating a  lame  peace  and  using  their  prestige 
with  the  socialist  parties  of  other  countries,  both 
neutral  and  belligerent,  to  unnerve  the  resistance 
of  the  Entente  countries  by  fostering  dissension 
amongst  their  population. 

But  sentence  has  been  so  definitely  passed  on 
the  guilt  of  German  social-democracy  that  it  is 
useless  to  discuss  it  any  further.  Much  more 
interest  attaches  to  the  causes  of  the  contrast 
between  its  tremendous  power  of  organisation 
and  the  pusillanimity  of  its  action  when  the  ag- 
gressive pohcy  of  German  imperiaUsm  put  its 
sincerity  and  courage  to  the  test. 

The  4th  of  August  was  less  of  a  surprise  to 
many  socialists  outside  of  Germany  than  is  now 


GERMAN   MILITARISM         145 

generally  believed.  Jean  Jaures  had  voiced  the 
feelings  of  practically  all  those  who  knew  Ger- 
many when  he  said  at  the  International  Socialist 
Congress  of  Amsterdam  in  1904,  in  his  famous 
oratorical  duel  with  August  Rebel: 

**There  is  a  rnenace  that  hangs  over  Europe 
and  the  world,  a  menace  to  peace,  to  our  liber- 
ties, to  the  development  of  the  socialist  and  labour 
movement,  to  poHtical  and  social  progress  at 
large.  .  .  .  This  menace  is  the  pohtical  impo- 
tence of  German  social-democracy.  Certainly, 
you  are  a  great  and  admirable  party,  which  has 
given  international  socialism  some  of  its  most 
powerful  and  deepest  thinkers,  and  the  example 
of  methodically  coordinated  action  and  progres- 
sively strong  organisation.  .  .  .  Yet,  the  more 
your  power  increases,  the  more  manifest  becomes 
the  contrast  between  your  apparent  political  im- 
portance, as  measured  by  the  increasing  figure 
of  your  votes  and  your  representatives  in  public 
administration,  and  your  real  influence,  your  real 
force  of  action.  On  the  day  after  the  June  elec- 
tions, when  you  polled  a  three  milhon  vote,  it  be- 
came clear  to  all  that  you  had  an  admirable  re- 
cruiting power,  but  that  neither  the  traditions  of 
your  proletariat,  nor  the  mechanism  of  your  con- 
stitution put  you  in  a  position  to  utilise  this 
apparently  colossal  power." 

The  most  conclusive  evidence  of  the  "pohtical 
impotence"  of  German  social-democracy  has  al- 


146     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

ways  been  her  persistent  refusal  to  fight  mih- 
tarism.  At  the  time  of  my  collaboration  with 
Karl  Liebknecht's  antimilitarist  propaganda,  I 
had  ample  opportunity  to  see  for  myself  how 
stubbornly  the  leaders  of  social-democracy  re- 
fused to  undertake  anything  which  might  have 
weakened  the  military  machine  of  Prussianised 
Germany.  So  far  as  it  did  not  consist  of  the 
mere  utterance  of  non-committal  platitudes,  their 
activity  was  confined  to  combating  such  minor 
abuses  of  the  system  as  the  ill-treatment  of  sol- 
diers by  their  superiors,  and  the  insufficient  pay- 
ment of  the  non-commissioned  officers  and  men. 
I  happened  to  be  associated  with  one  of  the  first 
public  utterances  that  attracted  international  at- 
tention to  this  attitude  of  German  social-democ- 
racy. In  January,  1906,  I  published  in  the 
Brussels  Peuple  an  interview  on  the  subject 
with  the  late  August  Bebel — ^the  recognised  lead- 
er of  Social-Democracy — ^whose  statements  cre- 
ated quite  a  sensation.  They  were  so  characteris- 
tic of  the  fear  of  the  German  Social-Democrats 
even  to  say  anything  that  might  be  interpreted  as 
an  infringement  of  national  solidarity,  and  so 
dominated  by  the  conviction  that  in  case  of  war 
the  masses  would  obey  the  government's  orders 
irrespective  of  what  social-democracy  would  say, 
that  Georges  Clemenceau,  then  editor  of  the 
Paris  Aurore^  wrote  the  following  comment: 
"We  know  perfectly  well  what  Bebel  would 


GERMAN    MILITARISM  147 

do  in  case  of  war.  He  would  protest,  as  in  1870, 
and  would,  together  with  a  small  group  of  his 
comrades,  heroically  face  imprisonment.  As  to 
his  party,  and  as  to  the  ^working  class'  of  Ger- 
many, they  would  be  in  the  ranks,  and  use  their 
guns  and  rifles  against  the  'working  class'  of 
France." 

Alas!  Clemenceau  proved  too  optimistic,  even 
though  he  expected  no  more  than  a  formal  pro- 
test by  the  leaders  of  German  social-democracy. 
Not  even  that  happened ! 

The  persistence  of  the  German  Social-Demo- 
crats in  treating  militarism  as  taboo  was  such  a 
puzzle  to  the  foreign  delegates  at  international 
congresses  that  most  of  them,  for  lack  of  a  better 
explanation,  simply  beheved  in  the  accusation 
thrown  in  their  faces  by  Gustave  Herve  at  the 
Stuttgart  International  Congress  in  1904? :  "Vous 
autres  AUemands,  vous  avez  peur,  peur,  peur  de 
la  prison  1" 

Herve  was  unjust.  Until  1914,  there  was  no 
lack  of  German  Social-Democrats  who  showed 
the  individual  courage  of  putting  up  with  im- 
prisonment for  taking  part  in  the  general  activity 
of  the  party.  The  root  of  the  evil  lay  much 
deeper.  It  was  social-democracy  itself,  the  Ger- 
man workers  as  a  whole,  who  had  in  the  inmost 
recesses  of  their  conscience  accepted  German 
militarism  as  a  necessary  institution,  against 
which  it  would  be  futile  to  rebel.    If  the  party 


148     THE  REMAKIlSrG  OF  A  MIND 

had  engaged  in  anti-militarist  propaganda,  they 
would  have  put  Herve  in  the  wrong  on  this  point 
by  carrying  out  the  party's  decision  in  that  case 
also,  at  the  risk  of  any  number  of  years  in  jail. 
They  would  have  done  so  out  of  party  discipline. 

I  knew  enough  of  Germany  and  the  Germans 
to  be  sceptical  about  their  inclination  to  rebel 
against  authority.  Yet  I  hoped  until  1914  that 
the  very  strength  which  their  party  discipline 
gave  them  and  the  slow  but  thorough  action  of 
their  theoretical  propaganda  would  ultimately 
create  such  a  colossal  power  and  such  an  extreme 
tension  between  the  ruhng  classes  and  the  prole- 
tarian block  that  revolution  would  unavoidably 
follow.  .  .  .  1914  made  me  realise  that  I 
had  hoped  against  the  obvious.  The  worst  of  the 
German  system  of  government  was  that,  through 
its  systematic  permeation  of  the  whole  nation,  in- 
cluding social-democracy,  with  the  spirit  of  mili- 
tary submissiveness,  it  deprived  its  natural  oppo- 
nents of  the  very  qualities  which  they  required 
to  fight  it. 

When  I  was  in  Russia  in  1917,  the  late  George 
Plekhanoff,  with  whom  I  had  been  acquainted 
for  several  years,  reminded  me  of  a  little  incident 
that  throws  a  characteristic  light  on  the  universal 
and  instinctive  submission  of  the  Germans  to 
mechanical  discipline.  It  happened  in  1906,  in 
Mannheim,  where  we  were  both  attending,  as 
fraternal  delegates,  the  Annual  Congress  of  the 


GERMAN    MILITARISM         149 

Social-Democratic  Party.  One  afternoon,  we, 
together  with  Karl  Liebknecht,  entered  the  exhi- 
bition building,  where  the  Congress  was  then  sit- 
ting. Two  long  parallel  corridors  led  from  the 
vestibule  to  the  hall.  As  we  were  about  half  way- 
down  one  of  these,  Liebknecht  suddenly  stopped 
and  pointed  to  a  board — "Ausgangf'  We  had 
taken  the  wrong  corridor,  but  it  made  no  differ- 
ence to  anybody,  as  the  two  corridors  debouched 
into  the  same  hall  and  there  was  nobody  about 
except  we  three.  Yet  Liebknecht  insisted  on 
turning  about,  and  we  had  to  walk  about  fifty 
yards  back  in  order  to  enter  by  the  ''Eingang" 
corridor.  The  mere  idea  of  entering  through  the 
"Ausgang"  was  so  abhorrent  to  Liebknecht's 
mind  that  he  would  rather  waste  a  hundred  paces 
on  going  back.  He  was  a  revolutionary  and  an 
antimihtarist ;  but  he  had  once  been  a  German 
soldier ! 

In  the  army,  a  German  Social-Democrat 
ceased  to  be  anything  but  a  soldier.  When  I 
was  a  liaison  officer  with  the  British  army,  I  was 
frequently  entrusted  with  the  cross-examination 
of  German  prisoners.  They  mostly  belonged  to  a 
Saxon  Corps  which  remained  opposite  our  sector 
for  about  a  year.  The  majority  of  them  were 
working  men  and  social-democrats.  Sometimes 
they  knew  me  from  my  stay  at  Leipzig.  In  that 
case,  after  the  military  cross-examination,  I 
would  arrange  for  a  private  interview.     Then 


150    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

I  did  all  I  could  to  put  the  man  at  his  ease,  and 
asked  him  to  consider  me  as  a  "Genosse''  with 
whom  he  could  have  a  heart-to-heart  talk  about 
purely  pohtical  matters.  I  knew  that  the  desire 
not  to  give  anything  away  would  not  prevent  him 
from  talking  freely,  for  nearly  always  the  Ger- 
man privates  proved  exceedingly  talkative  when 
cross-examined  and  almost  anxious  to  demon- 
strate in  this  way  that  they  were  as  submissive 
towards  the  enemy  ofBcer  as  they  had  been 
towards  their  own  officers  until  a  day  or  two  be- 
fore. Yet  I  never  succeeded  in  making  my  late 
'^comrades"  unbosom  themselves  more  than  they 
would  have  done  with  any  other  officer.  They 
remained  stiffly  at  attention  and  continued  to  call 
me  ''Herr  Leutnant/"  Sometimes  they  would 
even  use  the  characteristic  "Melde  gehorsamsty 
zu  Befehl/^  They  seemed  constitutionally  un- 
able to  forget,  even  for  one  moment,  that  they 
were  talking  to  a  superior.  After  several  experi- 
ences of  this  kind,  it  dawned  upon  me  that  I  had 
never  understood  the  mind  of  those  German 
workers  whom  I  had  only  studied  in  civilian  life. 
Not  until  I  had  faced  them  as  soldiers  standing 
to  attention  did  I  really  know  them. 

German  social-democracy  lacked  only  one 
thing,  but  unfortunately  it  was  the  only  indis- 
pensable thing:  the  will  to  fight  the  mihtary 
spirit  by  eradicating  miUtarism  itself.  It  lacked 
this  will  because,  unlike  labour  in  England, 


GERMAN    MILITARISM         151 

France,  Belgium  and  all  other  democratic  coun- 
tries, the  German  proletariat  itself  was  the  fruit 
of  a  system  that  owed  its  development  to  mili- 
tarism. It  had  no  revolutionary  tradition.  It 
had,  it  is  true,  formed  a  great  party  that  aimed 
at  an  overthrow  of  the  social  system,  but  the 
methods  and  the  very  thoughts  of  this  party  were 
but  part  and  parcel  of  the  spirit  of  national  sol- 
idarity, discipline  and  authority — worship  that 
was  to  make  Germany  foremost  in  the  world. 
Even  if  they  had  succeeded  in  replacing  the  rule 
of  the  Kaiser  by  the  rule  of  the  proletariat,  and 
in  socialising  production,  though  they  would  have 
improved  the  material  condition  of  the  working 
classes,  they  would  not  have  improved  the  soul 
of  the  nation,  which  would  then  merely  obey  and 
worship  another  authority,  equally  oppressive  of 
the  freedom  that  makes  life  worth  living.  In 
short,  they  did  not  love  freedom  as  we  did  in 
Western  Europe,  because  they  had  never  con- 
quered it;  and  they  were  no  real  democrats,  be- 
cause they  did  not  enjoy  that  minimum  of  pohti- 
cal  freedom  and  self-government  that  makes  a 
democracy  possible. 

It  took  me  many  an  hour  of  pitiless  self-criti- 
cism before  I  came  to  this  conclusion,  which 
turned  my  previous  admiration  for  German  so- 
cial-democracy into  bottomless  contempt.  But 
it  brought  home  to  me  two  new  truths  of  which 
I  highly  value  the  discovery:  the  essential  impor- 


152     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

tance  of  political  democracy;  and  the  funda- 
mental difference  between  my  socialist  ideal, 
based  on  justice  through  freedom,  and  that  of 
German  social-democracy,  based  on  justice 
through  authority. 


VII 

WHY    MEN   FOUGHT 

No,  Bill,  I'm  not  a-spooning  out  no  patriotic  tosh 

(The  cove  behind  the  sandbags  ain't  a  death-or-glory  cuss) 

And  though  I  strafes  'em  good  and  'ard  I  doesn't  hate  the  Boche, 

I  guess  they're  mostly  decent,  just  the  same  as  most  of  us, 

I  guess  they  loves  their  'omes  and  kids  as  much  as  you  or  me; 

And  just  the  same  as  you  or  me  they'd  rather  shake  than  fight; 

And  if  we'd  'appened  to  be  born  at  Berlin-on-the-Spree, 

We'd  be  out  there  with  'Ans  and  Fritz,  dead  sure  that  we  was  right. 

A-standin'  up  to  the  sandbags 

It's  funny  the  thoughts  wot  come; 

Starin'   into   the  darkness, 

'Earin'  the  bullets  'um; 

[{Zing!    Zip!    Ping!    Rip!) 

'Ark  'ow  the  bullets  'uml 

A-leanin'  against  the  sandbags 

Wiv  me  rifle  under  me  ear; 

Oh,  I've  'ad  more  thoughts  on  a  sentry-go 

Than  I  used  to  'ave  in  a  year. 

Robert  W.  Sebvice,  A  8ong  of  the  Sandbags, 

My  attempts  to  judge  objectively  the  national 
characteristics  of  the  foe  might  create  the  impres- 
sion that  my  hatred  of  Prussianism  was  purely 
intellectual.  On  the  contrary,  this  hatred  was 
as  instinctive  and  strong  a  passion  as  was  my  love 
of  Germany  and  my  desire  to  see  the  German 
nation  free  and  redeemed. 

If  it  had  been  otherwise,  I  could  not  have 
fought  at  all.  Anybody  with  a  little  experience 
of  combatant  service  will  admit  that  hatred  is  a 

153 


154    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

military  necessity.  It  is  as  indispensable  in  a 
war  as  are  weapons  or  supplies. 

This,  by  the  way,  is  one  of  the  main  reasons 
why  war  should  be  opposed  as  destructive  of 
some  of  the  higher  impulses  which  are  necessary 
to  the  progress  of  mankind.  For  the  kind  of  ha- 
tred necessitated  and  generated  by  a  war  like 
this  is  not  the  enlightened  passion  that  only  sees 
in  men  the  victims  or  the  instruments  of  a  sys- 
tem. Nor  is  it  the  enlightening  passion  that, 
through  fighting  these  men,  leads  to  discernment 
and  hatred  of  the  system;  for  experience  shows, 
on  the  contrary,  that  the  fighting  tends  to  inure 
to  that  system  the  very  men  who  have  set  out  to 
fight  it. 

I  hope  that  in  all  belligerent  countries  there 
will  be  found  a  sufficient  number  of  combatants 
with  the  courage  to  emancipate  themselves  from 
the  sentimental  and  ethical  cant  that  has  been 
brought  into  fashion  with  the  public  by  a  conven- 
tional literature,  and  to  say  what,  if  they  dare  look 
it  in  the  face,  they  know  to  be  the  truth  of  their 
experience.  My  conclusion  is  that  the  impulses 
which  actuated  most  of  the  combatants  had  very 
little  to  do  with  the  ethical  motives,  preached  by 
the  leaders  of  public  opinion,  for  or  against  cer- 
tain systems  of  government.  They  were  accept- 
ed as  more  or  less  mythical  symbols,  that  is  all. 
The  masses  everywhere  started  fighting  because 
they  were  forced  to  do  so,  or  led  to  believe — 


WHY   MEN    FOUGHT  155 

whether  rightly  or  wrongly,  need  not  concern  us 
here — through  the  machinery  by  which  a  leading 
minority  makes  pubhc  opinion,  that  they  were  to 
defend  their  homes,  their  families  and  their  pos- 
sessions against  an  enemy  bent  on  taking  all  this 
away  from  them.  And  they  went  on  fighting, 
because  fighting  itself  created,  by  the  action  of 
mihtary  discipHne,  the  additional  impulses  with- 
out which  it  could  not  have  lasted,  to  wit:  the 
inculcation  of  the  sense  of  duty,  solidarity  and 
comradeship;  the  suggestive  power  of  the  in- 
stincts of  imitation,  emulation  and  pride;  and, 
chiefly,  the  spirit  of  revenge.  It  is  obvious  that 
all  these  impulses  are  blinds  that  is,  their  working 
is  independent  of  the  motives  of  the  minority  that 
disposes  of  the  machinery  through  which  they 
are  created.  Experience  has  shown  that  this  ma- 
chinery was  equally  effective  in  all  European 
countries,  whether  the  motives  of  the  men  at  the 
rudder  were  ethically  good  or  bad;  at  any  rate, 
it  was  so  for  four  years,  both  in  the  armies  of  the 
Central  Powers  and  those  of  the  Entente. 

This  at  any  rate  applies  to  the  European 
armies.  From  the  little  I  have  seen  of  the  Amer- 
ican army  I  take  it  that  there  was,  to  say  the 
least,  a  much  larger  proportion  of  conscious  ethi- 
cal motives  in  its  ranks  than  in  those  of  any  Euro- 
pean power.  This  was  obviously  due,  for  a  con- 
siderable part,  to  the  higher  level  of  popular 
education  in  America.    The  fact  that  the  elemen- 


156     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

tary  teaching  in  American  boys'  schools  is  done 
by  women  and  that  rehgious  bodies  are,  as  a  rule, 
much  more  permeated  with  ethical  hfe  than  those 
of  the  European  continent,  probably  also  con- 
tributed in  making  the  average  American  soldier 
more  receptive  to  considerations  of  justice  and 
human  fairness  at  large.  Furthermore,  the 
American  army  was  largely  selected  from 
amongst  the  best  part  of  the  young  generation, 
which  has  naturally  enjoyed  the  benefit  of  better 
educational  methods.  But  the  chief  reason  of  the 
American  army's  greater  consciousness  of  the 
ethical  war-aims  clearly  originated  in  the  fact 
that  the  motives  of  the  American  Government 
itself  were  disinterested.  After  the  country  had 
long  remained  neutral  for  lack  of  an  immediate 
interest  in  the  conflict,  the  war  had  to  be  made 
popular  by  a  propaganda  in  which  indignation 
against  the  brutality  of  Germany's  aggression 
and  methods  of  warfare  proved  the  most  effective 
means  to  arouse  public  opinion.  It  will  be  the 
everlasting  pride  and  glory  of  the  United  States 
to  have  set  a  unique  example  in  the  world's  his- 
tory by  engaging  in  a  war  like  this  for  interests 
not  particularly  their  own,  but  common  to  all 
mankind. 

In  Europe  also,  ethical  motives  played  a  large 
part  in  war  propaganda.  Above  all,  the  viola- 
tion of  the  neutrality  of  Belgium  stirred  what  is 
conventionally  called  the  pubUc  mind  in  many 


WHY   MEN    FOUGHT  157 

countries.  This  especially  applies  to  England. 
There  the  war  would  hardly  have  been  popular 
enough  in  the  first  days  had  it  not  been  for  the 
appeal  to  her  chivalry  that  was  answered  by  the 
sending  of  an  expeditionary  force  to  redress  the 
wrong  done  to  Belgium.  But  important  though 
this  motive  was,  it  was  only  with  a  minority  of 
the  combatants  that  it  was  strong  enough  to  act 
as  an  actual  impulse  to  fight. 

There  is,  of  course,  a  mutual  reaction  between 
what  the  people  at  home  think  and  what  the  com- 
batants at  the  front  do.  However,  I  am  not 
dealing  here  with  the  motives  of  nations  at  large 
— which  are  a  problem  by  themselves,  and  a 
very  complicated  one,  too — but  merely  with  the 
passions  that  make  the  combatant  minority  do 
the  actual  fighting.  They  are  two  quite  differ- 
ent questions.  It  is  easier  to  make  a  civilian 
in  Chicago  who  reads  his  newspaper  at  break- 
fast curse  the  Kaiser  and  wish  he  could  throttle 
the  Crown  Prince,  than  to  make  a  soldier  cross 
a  bit  of  ground  swept  by  machine-gun  bullets, 
to  go  and  kill  people  whom  he  has  never  seen 
and  against  whom  he  has  no  individual  grudge. 
If  you  talk  from  a  soap-box  to  a  crowd  at  home 
in  order  to  incense  it  against  the  enemy,  there 
is  no  nonsense  you  can  not  make  it  swallow,  pro- 
vided that  you  appeal  to  the  sense  of  morality 
and  chivalry  which  it  will  take  a  childish  pride 
in  demonstrating.     But  it  is  a  different  matter 


158     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

to  talk  to  soldiers  before  an  attack.  I  have 
known  Belgian  officers — especially  amongst  the 
regulars,  used  to  the  grandiloquent  barrack- 
ground  eloquence  of  peace-time — who  thought 
they  would  improve  the  fighting  determination 
of  their  men  by  talking  what  the  men  themselves 
despised  as  "patriotic  stuff";  and  I  have  heard 
the  comments  of  the  audience  afterwards.  I  am 
thankful  that  I  had  this  experience  before  I  be- 
came an  officer  myself,  for  it  has  put  me  on  my 
guard  against  a  similar  mistake.  When,  later  on, 
I  became  a  trench  mortar  officer  in  the  Belgian 
army,  I  could  not  have  made  a  so-called  patriotic 
speech  to  my  men  even  if  I  had  been  promised 
a  V.  C.  for  it.  It  is  the  sort  of  thing  a  General 
or  a  Secretary  for  War  may  do.  If  his  eloquence 
remains  within  reasonable  bounds,  it  will  merely 
be  taken  by  the  hearers  as  matter-of-fact  evi- 
dence that  something  particular  is  expected  of 
them.  If  it  has  the  tactlessness  to  overemphasise 
the  necessity  of  sacrifices,  which  are  the  daily  lot 
of  the  listening  soldier,  whilst  they  mean  some- 
thing much  less  personal  and  immediate  to  the 
speaker,  its  effect  will  be  the  opposite  of  what 
was  intended.  It  will  then  give  rise  to  sarcastic 
remarks  among  the  men  about  people  who  ought 
to  know  what  they  are  talking  about,  people  who 
would  do  better  to  see  to  it  that  there  is  less  plum- 
and-apple  jam  and  black  haricots,  and  people 
who  are  not  going  to  bother  very  much  anyway 


WHY    MEN    FOUGHT  159 

about  what  will  happen  to  Jim's  "Missus"  and 
kiddies  if  Jim  gets  ''napooh-ed''  that  night. 

But  for  a  lieutenant  or  a  captain,  who  will 
have  to  face  the  music  himself  along  with  his 
men,  to  talk  patriotism  or  "ethical  motives"  to 
them,  would  be  a  mistake  which  they  would  only 
forgive  him  if  they  were  exceedingly  fresh  from 
the  drilling-camp  or  fond  enough  of  their  leader 
to  take  a  lenient  view  of  his  eccentricities.  For 
about  a  year  I  have  been  in  command  of  as  brave 
a  lot  of  soldiers  as  could  be  found  in  any  army; 
but  I  knew  well  enough  that  if  there  were  noth- 
ing to  make  them  fight  but  the  desire  to  see 
Germany  punished  for  having  broken  a  pledge, 
or  to  make  the  world  safe  for  democracy,  they 
would  rather  have  left  the  fighting  to  others. 
Ninety-five  per  cent  of  them  were  almost  illiter- 
ate peasants  and  laborers,  who  could  not  have 
pointed  to  Germany  on  a  map  of  Europe,  or 
answered  a  single  elementary  question  about  the 
difference  between  the  Constitution  of  Germany 
and  that  of  their  own  country.  What  was  de- 
mocracy to  them?  A  word,  no  more,  which  at 
the  utmost  they  were  prepared  to  accept  as  a 
symbol  for  the  realities  that  really  mattered  in 
their  lives:  their  little  house,  their  family,  their 
cows  and  pigs  and  chickens,  their  potato-field  and 
their  right  to  sit  at  a  certain  table  in  the  village- 
inn  on  Sunday  mornings. 

Why,  then,  did  they  fight?     First  of  all,  to 


160     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

defend  their  home,  their  people,  their  cattle,  their 
field  and  their  rights  in  the  village-inn  against 
people  whom  they  did  not  know,  but  of  whom 
they  believed  that  they  wanted  to  take  all  these 
things  away.  This  at  least  had  made  them  will- 
ingly obey  the  order  of  mobilisation.  But  now, 
as  months  and  years  went  by,  and  war  became  a 
routine,  with  its  set  rules,  traditions  and  habits, 
like  working  in  the  fields  or  in  a  factory,  the 
vision  of  home  created  a  sentimental  longing  for 
it  more  than  a  militant  will.  Only  those  who 
knew  that  their  home  had  been  actually  destroyed 
or  their  people  ill-treated  by  the  foe  were  still 
actuated  by  the  will  to  follow  up  their  vendetta, 
with  a  fury  increased  by  the  rage  of  being  unable 
to  get  at  close  quarters  with  an  enemy  who  had 
dug  himself  in  so  near.  The  desire  to  recover 
their  homes  did  not  again  become  a  general  im- 
pulse to  fight  until  the  final  great  offensive,  which 
aimed  at  the  throwing  back  of  an  enemy  that  for 
four  years  had  prevented  them  from  going  home. 
To  drive  this  enemy  away,  the  men  of  Belgium 
and  Northern  France,  like  those  of  Serbia,  fought 
with  the  fury  that  prefers  knives  to  bayonets. 
But  during  the  four  years  of  stabilisation  along 
the  Flanders  front  this  possibility  seemed  but  re- 
mote.   I  have  at  that  time  often  heard  men  say: 

"Why  does  not  this  b war  end?    After  all, 

those  b Boche  fellows  over  there  are  just  in 


WHY   MEN    FOUGHT  161 

the  same  b mess  as  we  are.    They  must  be 

just  as  keen  on  getting  home  as  we  are." 

Something  else  was  therefore  required  to  make 
the  men  fight  and  stand  hardships  which  seem 
to  have  put  back  beyond  any  reasonable  bounds 
the  limits  of  human  endurance  and  nervous 
strength. 

One  motive  common  to  the  generality  of  com- 
batants, and  perhaps  the  most  powerful  and  last- 
ing, was  the  sense  of  duty.  By  this  I  mean 
something  quite  different  from  the  desire  to 
achieve  a  purpose  consciously  accepted  as  good. 
It  was  at  the  same  time  something,  less  than 
that,  and  something  more.  Less,  for  individual 
reasoning  had  played  no  part  in  formulating  the 
moral  imperative;  more,  because  the  instinctive 
sacrifice  to  a  duty  not  checked  by  self-criticism 
demonstrated  the  tremendous  elementary  power 
of  the  desire  not  to  disappoint  others  who  ex- 
pect something  of  you.  It  is  this  instinct  that 
makes  it  normal  for  the  least  educated  of  com- 
mon labourers  to  do  his  job  well.  Many  people 
who  have  to  make  others  work  lose  sight,  in  the 
shortcomings  of  individuals  and  the  petty  cares 
and  difficulties  of  the  daily  routine  of  industrial 
life,  of  the  depth  and  power  of  this  sense  of  duty, 
this  natural  pride  of  a  man  in  his  work.  Leaders 
of  industry  too  often  forget  that  this  moral  value 
is  the  most  essential  of  all  the  means  of  produc- 
tion which  they  control,  and  that  therefore  there 


162     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

is  but  one  problem  in  labour  management :  to  en- 
courage, to  develop  and  to  educate  that  instinct. 
I  did  not  realise  myself  how  much  reliance  could 
be  placed  on  it  until  I  experienced  it  as  a  com- 
mander of  men  at  the  front.  It  is  one  of  the 
discoveries  I  made  during  the  war,  and  it  has 
done  a  good  deal  to  strengthen  my  belief  in  the 
soundness  of  the  fundamental  social  inclinations 
of  human  nature. 

To  those  who  hold  a  false  romantic  view  of  a 
soldier's  life  in  the  Great  War,  this  likening  of 
fighting  to  an  industrial  job  may  seem  odd  and 
artificial.  They  do  not  realise  that  most  of  a 
soldier's  duty  is  work  anyway.  Actual  individual 
fighting  is  an  exception.  I  know  many  soldiers, 
even  in  the  infantry,  who  were  at  the  front  from 
August,  1914,  till  November,  1918,  and  behaved 
like  heroes,  yet  never  had  an  opportunity  to  look 
an  enemy  in  the  face.  But  even  if  they  had,  the 
main  motive  of  all  their  actions  would  not  for  a 
moment  have  ceased  to  be  the  same  quality  of 
self-respect  that  in  professional  life  manifests 
itself  as  a  workman's  pride. 

People  who  are  used  to  think  for  themselves, 
or  imagine  they  do,  are  too  often  inclined  to  take 
a  false  rationalistic  view  of  the  psychology  of 
the  masses.  They  ascribe  all  action  to  conscious 
individual  reasoning  and  fail  to  realise  that  the 
majority  of  ignorant  peasants  and  labourers,  who 
formed  the  bulk  of  European  armies,  were  but  an 


WHY   MEN    FOUGHT  163 

instrument  for  the  accomplishment  of  other  peo- 
ple's thoughts.  Perhaps  it  is  as  difficult  for  these 
rationalists  to  understand  mass  psychology  as  it 
is  for  the  superior  intellect  of  man  to  comprehend 
the  working  of  an  animal's  brain.  Let  us  keep 
in  mind,  then,  that  the  individuals  who  formed 
the  masses  referred  to  were  accustomed  from 
their  childhood  to  take  for  granted  the  ethical 
imperatives  which  they  saw  everybody  around 
them  accept.  Those  who  did  not  accept  them 
became  outcasts,  or  at  least  ran  the  risk  of  suffer- 
ing such  disagreeable  consequences  as  to  make 
acceptance  of  the  ruling  of  public  opinion  the 
most  commodious  course  to  an  ordinary  mind. 

When  the  war  broke  out,  the  imperative  was : 
to  obey  the  orders  of  the  powers  that  be ;  which, 
for  the  soldiers,  meant  to  fight.  It  was  pro- 
claimed through  all  the  channels  that  usually 
direct  the  actions  of  men :  the  state,  whose  power, 
moreover,  appeared  suddenly  to  have  reached 
overwhelming  proportions;  law  and  justice;  the 
newspapers ;  the  churches ;  the  schools ;  the  polit- 
ical parties;  in  short,  through  the  whole  machi- 
nery that  forms  public  opinion.  Not  to  accept  its 
ruling  meant  to  put  oneself  beyond  the  pale  of 
human  society.  No  ordinary  human  being  felt 
even  tempted  to  do  it.  For  the  imperative  of  pa- 
triotic duty  was  equipped  with  those  attributes  of 
sacrifice  ta  the  common  good  thiat  appeal  to  all 
the  social  impulses  of  man.  Who  obeyed  it  earned 


164     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

praise  and  admiration,  who  shirked  it  was  de- 
spised and  execrated  by  everybody  around  him. 

Once  in  the  ranks,  the  average  soldier  felt  the 
same  disposition  not  to  deceive  those  who  ex- 
pected certain  things  of  him,  and  who  therefore 
equipped  him,  paid  him  and  looked  after  his 
needs,  as  he  had  been  used  to  feel  in  civil  life 
towards  his  employer.  He  grumbled  when  he 
thought  that  the  x)ther  party  was  not  fairly  ob- 
serving the  terms  of  the  contract,  by  neglect  or 
avarice,  but  he  nevertheless  considered  himself 
bound  to  do  his  part.  Being  a  soldier  means  to 
be  a  piece  of  a  huge  mechanism  of  which  all 
parts  are  clearly  interdependent.  The  chiefs 
must  care  for  their  subordinates'  well-being,  and 
are  responsible  for  their  behaviour ;  therefore  they 
must  be  obeyed.  But  there  is  more:  a  soldier's 
life  or  death  depends  on  his  comrades  doing 
what  is  expected  of  them.  Here  the  instinct  of 
soUdarity  comes  into  play,  one  of  the  most  im- 
perious in  the  life  of  masses  habituated  to  live  in 
common,  to  suffer  in  common,  and  to  act  in  com- 
mon. The  longer  the  military  association  lasts, 
and  the  richer  the  experience  of  the  need  for 
comradeship  grows,  the  more  this  impulse  be- 
comes dominating. 

There  are  some  who  are  more  afraid  of  death 
than  most  men,  while  with  the  bravest  there  are 
moments  when  fear  threatens  to  have  the  best 
even  of  comradeship.     Here   discipline   inter- 


WHY   MEN   FOUGHT  165 

venes.    It  is  primarily  the  liabit,  which  eventu- 
ally becomes  a  need,  to  do  certain  things  auto- 
matically, asf  the  result  of  drilling.    A  man  who 
faces  the  bayonet  of  an  opponent,  even  though 
he  be  afraid,  will  not  as  a  rule  have  his  will 
paralysed  by  fear,  for  it  is  now  governed  by  the 
reflex  with  which  he  has  been  inculcated  on  the 
drilling-ground,  where  he  got  into  the  habit  of 
making  certain  corresponding  movements  with 
his  own  bayonet.    The  desire  to  get  at  the  ene- 
my's throat  that  was  wont  to  be  awakened  by 
these  movements  as  he  faced  an  imaginary  foe 
on  the  drill  ground  is  now  recalled  by  associa- 
tion.   Discipline  smothers  fear.    Again,  even  if 
the   force  of  habit   acquired  by  drilling   fails, 
there  rs  the  menace  \)f  the  officer's  pistol  or  of  the 
court  martial  with  its  power  to  inflict  a  death 
more  certain  tha^n  the  one  that  threatens  on  the 
battlefield — and  ignominious  into  the   bargain. 
But  these  are  exceptions,  though  they  are  not  by 
any  means  as  rare  as  most  people  think.    As  a 
rule,  the  latent  power  of  the  disciplinary  ma- 
chine to  oppose  the  fear  of  death  in  front  by  the 
fear  of  death  behind  is,  in  the  soldier's  mind,  but 
the  supreme  symbol  of  the  imperative  of  duty 
and  solidarity.    It  is  characteristic  enough  in  this 
respect  that  in  those  bodies  of  troops  where,  as 
in  the  Russian  army  under  the  Soviet  regime, 
courts  martial  were  composed  of  soldiers,  their 
sentences  against  cowards  or  deserters  from  duty 


166    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

were  more  merciless  than  those  of  the  officers' 
courts  had  been. 

On  the  other  hand,  conspicuous  obedience  to 
the  commands  of  duty  results,  or  may  result,  in 
rewards,  as  the  praise  of  the  officers,  mentions  in 
despatches  or  in  the  order  of  the  day,  decorations 
or  promotion.  Soldiers  of  a  certain  experience 
are  much  more  sceptical  about  the  value  of  these 
than  is  civilian  opinion,  for  they  know  too  well 
how  little  justice  and  discrimination  is  often 
used  in  conferring  certain  of  these  distinctions. 
When,  however,  they  really  confirm  the  suf- 
frages of  the  hero's  comrades,  they  are  all  the 
more  valued.  Anyway,  they  always  carry  with 
them  a  sufficient  amount  of  consideration  to  be 
appreciated  by  those  who  earn  them  or  expect 
to  do  so.  Perhaps  these  are  but  a  minority,  but 
this  minority  is  usually  composed  of  those  who, 
having  more  ambition,  initiative,  and  desire  to  be 
distinguished  above  the  others,  are  the  natural 
leaders  whom  the  herd  follows. 

There  is  another  fundamental  instinct  of  man 
that  makes  him  willing  to  fight  the  more  the 
longer  the  fighting  lasts:  his  desire  to  retaliate 
for  blows  he  has  suffered  himself,  or  has  seen  in- 
flicted on  his  comrades. 

In  this  connection  I  remember  an  incident 
that  throws  a  characteristic  light  on  soldiers' 
psychology  in  trench  warfare.  It  happened  in 
March,  1917,  in  the  Belgian  lines  in  front  of 


WHY    MEN    FOUGHT  167 

Dixmude,  where  I  was  then  in  position  with  my 
trench  mortar  battery,  a  short  distance  in  rear 
of  our  first  line.  The  latter  was  only  about 
thirty-five  yards  away  from  the  enemy,  who  held 
the  opposite  bank  of  the  Yser.  Things  had  been 
fairly  quiet  for  some  time,  except  for  desultory 
bombardments  in  the  rear  and  the  usual  ma- 
chine-gun and  rifle  fire  at  night.  The  natural 
consequence  was  that  the  fighting  morale  of  the 
infantry  fell  rather  low.  I  must  add  that  there 
was  a  certain  amount  of  discontent  on  account 
of  various  extraordinary  hardships  that  had  re- 
sulted from  a  long  spell  of  severe  cold.  Per- 
haps, also,  the  news  of  the  revolution  in  Russia 
and  of  the  fraternisations  on  the  Eastern  front 
had  suggested  imitation  in  the  minds  of  a  few 
light-headed  boys.  Be  that  as  it  may,  for  a  few 
days  in  succession  there  had  been  a  kind  of  tacit 
truce  along  the  first  line,  with  several  attempts 
at  communication.  They  were  timid  at  first, 
and  mostly  consisted  in  the  throwing  over  of 
jocular  messages.  Then  some  Belgian  soldiers 
threw  letters  across  with  the  request  to  send 
them  on  to  their  families  in  occupied  territory. 
Finally  a  few  men  got  up  on  the  parapet  on 
both  sides  and  talked  to  each  other  as  well  as 
they  could.  As  far  as  I  could  make  out,  the 
contents  of  their  conversation  were  quite  harm- 
less, and  mostly  in  the  nature  of  jocular  re- 
marks about  the  duration  of  the  war  and  similar 


168    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

subjects  of  common  interest.  Yet,  needless  to 
say,  the  whole  trend  of  affairs  was  such  as  to 
expose  the  culprits  to  severe  disciplinary  pun- 
ishment, though  it  probably  escaped  the  notice 
of  their  officers,  who  were  some  distance  away, 
as  the  first  line  was  but  a  system  of  outposts 
very  thinly  held.  I  overheard  some  of  the  re- 
marks of  my  own  men,  who  were,  like  myself, 
watching  events  from  the  rear,  and  others  were 
reported  to  me  later  on.  They  were  all  more  or 
less  to  this  effect:  "What's  the  harm,  after  all, 
in  talking  to  these  chaps?  They've  been  pretty 
decent  of  late.  They  haven't  thrown  over  no 
grenades  for  more  than  a  week.  They  are  poor 
blokes  like  us.  Their  positions  aren't  a  rap  more 
comfortable  than  ours,  you  know,  and  the  frost 
must  have  cut  off  their  supplies  of  potatoes  just 
like  ours.  They  say  their  officers  are  brutes. 
.  .  .  They  say  their  women  and  children  are 
hungry.  .  •  .  Aren't  they  men  like  us?  I  bet 
they  care  for  their  own  people,  and  want  to  get 
back  home  just  as  much  as  us!" 

Suddenly  a  shot  rang  out  from  our  line,  and 
reports  say  that  a  man  dropped  from  the  Ger- 
man parapet.  A  Belgian  officer,  whose  action, 
by  the  way,  was  diversely  judged  by  his  com- 
rades, had  fired  it.  The  Germans  retaliated  with 
a  few  grenades,  and  after  a  couple  of  minutes 
the  whole  place  was  as  "lively"  as  ever  before. 
Blood  had  flowed,  and  called  for  blood.     Pale 


WHY   MEN    FOUGHT  169 

faces  and  drawn  features  told  of  hatred  inflamed 
by  the  spirit  of  revenge.  Everything  that  had 
been  said  about  "those  poor  blokes  over  there" 
was  forgotten.  They  were  "Boches"  and  "grey 
vermin"  once  again.  I  think  if  I  had  allowed 
my  men  to  send  a  few  "flying  pigs"  over  to 
them — for  which  there  was  no  tactical  need — 
they  would  have  kissed  my  hands. 

Then  it  struck  me  that  the  shot  that  had  cre- 
ated such  a  revulsion  of  feelings  was  like  a 
symbol  of  the  first  shot  that,  on  the  first  day  of 
the  war,  had  hit  a  man  somewhere  in  Europe, 
and  awakened  his  comrades'  thirst  for  revenge. 

The  same  apparent  contradiction  in  the  sol- 
diers' feelings  towards  the  enemy  will  have 
struck  anybody  who  has  witnessed  many  scenes 
with  prisoners.  You  could  see  one  of  our  men 
come  limping  from  ^n  attack  with  a  bandaged 
leg,  his  face  still  pale,  his  lips  still  blue  and 
tightly  pressed,  his  eyes  still  bloodshot  with  the 
intensity  of  his  fury.  This  man  has  lived  for 
an  hour,  perhaps,,  with  no  other  desire  than 
to  kill  Germans,  to  kill  them  with  his  bayonet 
rather  than  with  a  bullet,  to  kill  them  by  crash- 
ing their  brains  out  with  his  rifle-butt  rather 
than  by  pushing  his  bayonet  through  their 
body,  to  kill  them  with  the  nails  of  his  fingers 
or  his  teeth  through  their  throat  rather  than  with 
his  rifle-butt — and  the  accomphshment  of  this 
desire  was  more  imperious  to  him  than  the  fear 


170     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

of  being  killed  himself,  than  pity  for  a  human 
life,  than  any  other  thing  in  the  world. 

He  meets  a  wounded  German  prisoner  who, 
perhaps  an  hour  ago,  was  possessed  by  the  same 
fury,  who  maybe  has  even  killed  some  of  this 
man's  pals.  Yet  this  man  will  cheer  "Fritz"  up 
by  some  rude,  jocular  remark,  whose  coarse  hu- 
mour but  faintly  hides  the  native  intonation  of 
human  sympathy.  Not  a  minute  later  you  will 
see  him  giving  a  cigarette  to  Fritz  and  lighting 
it  for  him,  and  if  Fritz  proves  a  little  less  able 
to  walk  than  himself,  he  will  lend  him  a  helping 
arm  and  they  will  hobble  off  together  .... 

These  again  are  exceptions,  but  this  sort  of 
scene  was  to  be  witnessed  any  number  of  times 
and,  as  far  as  I  know,  in  any  army  of  white  men. 
I  fancy  it  would  have  struck  some  of  our  civilian 
Boche-eaters  with  awe  if  they  had  been  able  to 
see  it.  Whenever  I  did  so,  it  filled  me  with 
gratitude  to  the  power  that,  through  the  darkest 
night  of  hatred,  allowed  some  sparks  from  the 
glowing  fire  of  human  kindness  to  remain  alight. 
And  yet  I,  too,  have  often  wished  I  could  use 
my  finger-nails  or  my  teeth  instead  of  my 
bayonet.  ... 

This  I  am  not  ashamed  to  admit.  It  is  what 
hatred  means,  and  it  is  this  sort  of  hatred,  made 
of  the  elementary  impulses  I  have  just  men- 
tioned, which  makes  soldiers  fight,  and  which  I 
have  called  a  military  necessity.    If  you  desire 


WHY    MEN    FOUGHT  171 

the  end,  you  must  accept  the  means.  If  you 
fight,  you  must  fight  well.  There  are  principles 
of  efficient  fighting,  just  as  there  are  principles 
of  efficient  working.  A  fundamental  princi- 
ple of  all  warfare  is  that  efficient  tactics  must  be 
offensive,  even  though  they  may  be  part  of  a 
defensive  strategical  plan.  To  be  fit  for  offen- 
sive action,  the  soldier  must  be  actuated  by  the 
desire  to  get  at  close  quarters  with  the  enemy. 
And — ^though  it  may  sound  crude  to  those  civil- 
ians who  dream  of  throttling  the  Crown  Prince, 
but  whose  flesh  creeps  at  the  thought  of  killing 
a  fowl — one  does  not  get  at  close  quarters  with 
the  enemy  for  the  purpose  of  sticking  a  flower  in 
his  buttonhole,  but  in  order  to  kill  him.  Even 
though  you  hate  Kaiserism,  or  any  other  ism,  you 
simply  cannot  kill  unless  you  hate  the  man  who 
opposes  you  because  of  the  colour  of  his  uni- 
form, and  for  as  long  as  he  carries  a  weapon 
with  which  he  may  kill  you  or  your  comrades. 

I  confess  to  have  felt  this  hatred,  and  to  have 
fostered  it  with  my  men,  and  I  have  no  other 
excuse  to  offer  than  that  it  was  a  necessary  part 
of  doing  my  duty  as  a  soldier  and  as  an  officer. 
This  is  one  of  the  very  reasons  why  I  hate  war. 
I  have  fought  in  this  war  because  I  thought  it 
had  to  be  done  to  make  a  lasting  peace  possible. 
And  I  thank  God  that  I  have  been  able  to 
cleanse  my  soul  from  hatred  as  soon  as  fighting 
ceased  to  be  a  duty. 


172     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

But  there  is  military  hatred  and  civilian  ha- 
tred. Civilian  hatred,  however  passionate,  may 
be  purely  hostility  against  a  system  of  govern- 
ment or  of  thought,  or  against  men  who  have 
been  proven  responsible  for  that  system.  In  that 
ease,  it  is  sacred.  But  it  ceases  to  be  worthy  of 
any  respect  when  it  takes  the  form  of  somebody's 
bragging  declamation  against  men  whom  he  is 
certain  he  will  never  face  and  in  regard  to  whom 
he  will  never  himself  experience  what  it  means 
to  have  to  destroy  life.  When  to  preach  the 
doctrine  of  hatred  is  (as  now  it  often  seems  to 
be)  but  a  hypocritical  means  to  get  rid  of  a 
clever  commercial  competitor,  it  is  wholly  de- 
spicable. Even  when  it  is  the  expression  of  a 
sincere  passion,  it  will  always  strike  the  combat- 
ant, who  has  paid  the  toll  of  military  hatred  to 
the  necessities  of  war,  as  a  useless,  thoughtless 
and  tactless  exhibition  of  feelings  that  should 
have  proved  their  genuineness  by  deeds  alone. 
It  is  a  distinct  menace  to  the  intellectual  and 
moral  life  of  a  people  that  indulges  in  it. 

This  will  explain  why,  whenever  I  thought  it 
necessary  to  encourage  the  fighting  determina- 
tion of  my  men  before  an  action  that  involved 
the  probability  of  heavy  losses,  I  carefully  avoid- 
ed anything  that  resembled  a  patriotic  oration. 
I  knew  that  it  would  be  received  with  inward 
contempt  by  men  who  wanted  no  explanation  as 
to  why  they  ought  to  die.     The  fact  that  they 


WHY   MEN    FOUGHT  173 

were  there  meant  that  they  knew  they  were  ex- 
pected to  do  their  soldier's  job.  They  could  be 
trusted  to  do  it — and  a  ghastly,  horrible  job  it 
was — if  I,  for  my  part,  did  mine.  All  they  ex- 
pected of  me  was  to  show  them  by  my  deeds 
that  I  could  be  relied  on  as  a  leader,  who  would 
cool-headedly  do  the  thinking  for  them  and 
never  leave  them  in  the  lurch.  I  knew  that,  if  my 
strength  did  not  fail  me,  they  would  follow  me 
to  the  death.  Just  before  the  decisive  moment 
came,  then,  I  would  say  to  one  of  my  men,  who 
I  knew,  in  spite  of  his  good-will,  suffered  from 
funk,  that  I  trusted  him  as  a  brave  soldier  and 
that,  if  he  did  well,  he  might  expect  a  distinction 
that  he  would  deserve  all  the  more,  as  he  was 
so  handicapped  by  his  nerves.  To  a  corporal, 
known  to  me  as  being  ambitious,  I  would  make 
a  casual  observation  about  his  chances  of  becom- 
ing a  sergeant.  To  some  of  the  boys  who  would 
certainly  spread  the  news  round  quickly — ^the 
signallers  or  the  cooks  by  preference — I  would 
remark  that  the  general  had  purposely  selected 
our  unit  for  the  job  ahead,  because  he  thought 
its  success  so  very  important.  And  at  the  last 
minute,  I  would  shout  to  them  all:  "Now,  boys, 
let  us  show  them  we  have  not  forgotten  Corporal 
A  and  Privates  B  and  C!"  (the  names  of  men 
killed  a  fortnight  before).  This  was  about  the 
climax  of  eloquence  I  reached  during  my  mili- 
tary career,  but  I  never  have  had  any  reason  to 


174     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

doubt  that  it  suited  the  purpose  more  than  any 
great  speech  that  would  have  appealed  to  weak 
brains  instead  of  relying  on  strong  instincts. 

At  first  sight  my  scepticism  about  the  high 
ethical  order  of  the  motives  that  make  men  fight 
may  seem  to  contradict  my  belief  in  the  power 
of  the  sentiment  of  justice  that  inspired  the 
people  of  the  Entente  countries  with  a  fighting 
determination  greater  than  that  which  the  most 
powerful  military  machine  of  the  world  had  been 
able  to  instil  into  the  people  of  the  Central 
Empires. 

This  contradiction  is  but  apparent.  I  am  not 
blind  to  the  fact  that  the  higher  order  of  the 
war  aims  pursued  by  the  democratic  nations  of 
Western  Europe,  and  the  greater  strength  they 
gave  their  populations  to  stand  the  stress  of  this 
war,  is  the  ultimate  reason  of  their  victory. 
Both  the  German  army  and  the  German  people 
have  shown  a  capacity  for  sacrifice  which  would 
compel  boundless  admiration  if  it  had  been  dis- 
played in  a  better  cause,  and  which,  even  as  it  is, 
fills  one  with  a  sort  of  involuntary  pride  in 
considering  what  a  nation  of  white  men  can 
achieve  when  it  is  strongly  organised  and  fired 
by  a  common  aim.  But  what  was  this  sacrifice 
in  comparison  with  that  to  which  our  western 
democracies  consented  for  the  sake  of  self-de- 
fence! The  very  fact  that  they  had  to  fight, 
though  loving  peace  and  hating  militarism,  al- 


WHY    MEN    FOUGHT  175 

ready  put  them  above  a  nation  of  soldiers, 
drilled  to  the  belief  in  militarism  as  a  means  to 
secure  their  "place  in  the  sun."  Moreover, 
Germany  had,  militarily,  the  upper  hand  for 
four  years,  fought  her  wars  on  enemy  territory, 
and  had  victories  on  all  fronts  to  console  her  for 
her  losses.  But  what  of  us?  Our  armies  were 
held  in  check  on  our  own  territories,  and  for 
nearly  four  years  it  seemed  as  though  no  offen- 
sive, however  lavish  of  human  life,  would  ever 
be  able  to  hurl  the  invader  back.  Many  a  time 
he  threatened,  as  in  the  spring  of  1918,  to  resume 
his  annihilating  sweep  of  1914.  Yet  the  darkest 
hours  were  those  of  the  grimmest  determination. 
We  could  lose  and  go  on  fighting.  The  Ger- 
mans could  not.  After  a  few  weeks  of  adversity 
in  the  summer  of  1918,  although  their  orderly 
and  slow  fighting  retreat  from  France  and  Bel- 
gium was  a  strategic  victory  as  compared  with 
the  rout  to  which  they  had  put  some  of  our 
armies  on  the  Somme,  on  the  Lys  and  in  Cham- 
pagne a  few  months  before,  their  power  of  nerv- 
ous resistance  collapsed  in  a  catastrophe  of  a 
magnitude  and  suddenness  unique  in  the  history 
of  the  world.  They  could  fight  only  with  vic- 
tory on  their  side,  because  they  had  no  other 
purpose  than  victory  and  domination.  We, 
however,  fought  in  spite  of  defeat,  because  we 
were  fighting  for  something  higher  than  a  vie- 


176     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

tory  of  arms.    The  superiority  of  our  morale  was 
due  to  the  superiority  of  our  aims. 

This,  by  the  way,  made  me  realise  from  the 
outset  that  ideal  forces,  like  the  attachment  to 
liberty,  the  spirit  of  justice  and  of  chivalry, 
played  a  much  greater  part  in  history  than  was 
dreamt  of  in  the  Marxian  philosophy  that  had 
thus  far  confined  my  outlook  too  exclusively  to 
the  economic  aspect  of  things.  But  to  understand 
how  these  ideal  forces  worked,  one  has  to  ana- 
lyse the  psychological  mechanism  through  which 
the  abstract  notion  of  a  nation's  will  manifests  it- 
self in  the  concrete  order  as  a  complex  of  actual 
individual  impulses.  When  we  examine  the  facts 
in  the  everyday  life  of  the  combatants,  we  find 
that  even  in  the  democratic  armies  of  the  Entente 
it  was  only  with  a  minority  that  conscious  and 
enlightened  acceptance  of  the  higher  motives  of 
the  nation's  policy  was  the  mainspring  of  ac- 
tion. To  acknowledge  this  fact  is  not  to  sin 
against  the  spirit  of  democracy.  Democracy 
would  not  be  worse  served  if  those  who,  like 
myself,  ardently  believed  in  it,  loved  it  with  a 
little  more  discernment  and  realised  that  the 
idea  of  self-government  of  the  masses  is  in  its 
literal  sense  a  myth.  In  no  democratic  country 
on  earth  is  there  more  than  a  minority  who  take 
a  conscious  interest  in  public  affairs.  Majorities 
are  the  instruments  through  which  minorities 
rule.    In  this  democracy,  in  its  present  stage  of 


WHY   MEN   FOUGHT  177 

development  at  least,  resembles  all  previous, 
non-democratic  forms  of  government.  It  differs 
from  them,  first,  by  the  fact  that  the  ruling 
minority  is  larger  than  in  any  autocracy  or  oli- 
garchy; then,  because  this  minority,  in  order  to 
obtain  power,  disposes  of  no  means  of  physical 
coercion  and  must  therefore  rely  on  the  machin- 
ery of  public  education,  the  press,  the  churches, 
official  organs  of  "public  information,"  and  other 
means  of  persuasion  to  create  the  required  dis- 
position in  the  "public  mind";  and  lastly,  be- 
cause the  necessity  to  use  these  means  of  persua- 
sion, and  the  competition  of  parties,  movements 
and  factions,  unavoidably  result  in  the  indefi- 
nite increase  of  the  quantity  and  the  quality  of 
those  who  take  a  thinking  citizen's  part  in  the 
government  of  the  nation.  It  is  chiefly  because 
of  this  last  reason  that  democracy  is  superior 
to  all  previous  methods,  for  it  allows  of  continu- 
ous self-improvement.  The  great  value  of  de- 
mocracy as  it  exists  is  not  that  it  actually  means 
self-government  of  all  the  people  by  all  the 
people,  but  that  it  is  the  only  way  which  ulti- 
mately leads  to  self-government  of  the  people 
by  as  large  a  number  as  are  capable  of  partici- 
pating therein.  In  the  meantime,  however,  let 
us  acknowledge  the  fact  that  in  every  existing 
democracy  the  impulses  that  make  the  masses 
act  are  but  an  unconscious  reflex  of  the  motives 
of  the  ruling  minorities  _who  make  public  opin- 


178     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

ion.  These  impulses  are  seldom  inspired  by 
purely  ethical  or  intellectual  considerations. 
They  either  rest  on  the  realisation  of  a  supposed 
or  real  interest,  or  result  from  the  action  of 
such  machinery  as  that  of  military  discipline, 
with  the  wonderful  stimulus  it  gives  to  the  in- 
stincts of  imitation,  emulation,  solidarity  and 
revenge. 

The  interest  of  an  analysis  of  the  mechanism 
of  fighting  psychology,  independently  of  what 
we  may  symbolically  call  the  nation's  will,  re- 
sides in  the  following  conclusion  that  is  to  be 
drawn  from  it.  In  the  hitherto  prevailing  Euro- 
pean system  of  compulsory  popular  armaments 
as  instruments  of  international  competition,  it 
was  always  possible  for  any  ruling  power,  even 
in  a  democratic  country,  to  make  its  army  fight. 
AU  that  is  necessary  is  that  the  elementary  pre- 
caution be  taken  to  formulate  a  pretext,  plausi- 
ble enough  to  popular  credulity  to  set  the  ma- 
chinery in  motion.  As  all  modern  wars  show, 
this  pretext  has  always  been  easy  to  find,  and 
almost  invariably  consists  in  the  assumption  of 
a  defensive  purpose.  Once  the  machinery  has 
started  moving,  it  collects  sufficient  impetus  to 
move  on  towards  any  goal,  by  the  mere  play  of 
the  progressive  accumulation  of  fighting  im- 
pulses generated  through  fighting  itself. 

In  his  admirable  book,  "Why  Men  Fight," 
Bertrand  Russell  has  emphasised  the  necessity. 


WHY    MEN    FOUGHT  179 

for  all  those  who  would  like  to  do  away  with  war 
and  militarism,  to  tackle  the  problem  at  its  psy- 
chological roots.  It  is  of  course  equally,  or  even 
more  important,  that.it  should  be  studied  from 
the  economic  and  political  viewpoint,  in  order  to 
gain  a  clear  understanding  of  the  changes  in  our 
social  and  international  status  that  are  an  essen- 
tial condition  to  lasting  peace.  Yet  it  would  be 
wrong  to  assume,  as  a  carelessly  superficial  ver- 
sion of  Marx's  economic  interpretation  of  his- 
tory has  too  often  done,  that  there  are  no  other 
causes  of  militarism  and  war  than  economic  com- 
petition and  the  political  ambitions  that  result 
from  it.  Militarism  itself,  namely  the  very  ex- 
istence of  more  or  less  permanent  armies. in  au- 
tonomous states,  and  its  unavoidable  encourage- 
ment of  latent  fighting  impulses,  is  a  possible 
cause  of  war.  Economic  competition  between 
states  can  work  itself  out  without  resort  to  actual 
violence,  just  as  conflicts  between  individuals 
can  be  settled  without  the  help  of  their  fists,  or 
as  labor  conditions  can  be  readjusted  without 
recourse  to  the  ultima  ratio  of  strike  or  lock-out. 
It  has  been  said  that  Germany  might  have  pur- 
sued her  aim  of  boundless  economic  expansion 
and  world  hegemony  by  the  mere  use  of  her 
means  of  "peaceful  penetration,"  and  with  a 
better  chance  of  success,  rather  than  by  risking 
everything  on  a  war.  This  remark  is  only  true 
insofar  as  it  relates  to  what  might  have  been  the 


180     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

policy  of  the  German  nation  if  It  had  been  in- 
spired exclusively  by  an  enlightened  view  of  the 
permanent  interest  of  its  majority,  and  not  by 
the  immediate  and  actual  interest  of  the  ruling 
classes  and  powers.  For  these  ruling  interests 
were  not  identical  with  those  of  the  masses. 
This,  again,  is  a  fact  largely,  though  not  ex- 
clusively, due  to  the  existence  of  militarism  as 
an  unconstitutional,  but  extremely  effective 
power  within  the  state,  and  of  a  military  caste, 
with  no  interest  but  war,  within  the  ruling  classes 
themselves.  The  existence  of  the  instrument 
creates  the  temptation  to  use  it.  This  tendency 
is  so  inherent  to  any  permanent  army,  even  in  a 
democratic  country,  that  one  has  a  right  to  be 
sceptical  about  the  power  of  any  measure,  short 
of  universal  disarmament,  to  insure  a  lasting 
peace. 


VIII 

HEROISM 

.  .  .  Psha!  the  courage  to  rage  and  kill  is  cheap.  I  have 
an  English  bull  terrier  who  has  as  much  of  that  sort  of  courage 
as  the  whole  Bulgarian  nation,  and  the  whole  Russian  nation  at 
its  back.  But  he  lets  my  groom  thrash  him,  all  the  same.  That's 
your  soldier  all  over!  No,  Louka:  your  poor  men  can  cut 
throats;  but  they  are  afraid  of  their  oflficers;  they  put  up  with 
insults  and  blows;  they  stand  by  and  see  one  another  pun i -shed 
like  children — aye,  and  help  to  do  it  when  they  are  ord>  red. 
And  the  oflficersr! — ^well  {toith  ff,  short  hitter  laugh)  I  ar  an 
officer.  Oh,  {fervently)  give  me  the  man  who  will  defy  t  the 
death  any  power  on  earth  or  in  heaven-  that  sets  itself  up  against 
his  own  will  and  conscience:  he  alone  is  the  brave  man. 

G.  B.  ShaWj  Sergius  in  Arms  and  the  Man,  III. 

There  were  many  other  aspects  of  soldiers' 
psychology  that  increased  my  abhorrence  of  war 
and  militarism.  I  deem  it  a  duty  to  discuss  them 
without  fear  of  hurting  the  sensitiveness  of  well- 
intentioned  patriots  and  hero-worshippers.  Even 
in  our  peace-loving  democratic  countries,  which 
entered  the  Great  War  to  do  away  with  mili- 
tarism, the  necessity  to  use  military  means  for 
that  purpose  has  created,  with-  a  large  section  of 
the  population,  a  kind  of  enthusiasm  that,  if  it  be 
not  checked,  will  make  the  remedy  we  have  used 
to  cure  the  worid  of  military  intoxication  worse 
than  the  evil  itself.  I  am  not  thinking  here  of 
the  small  minority  of  those  who,  in  every  coun- 
try, professed  bellicose  enthusiasm  out  of  mate- 

181 


182     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

rial  interest,  but  of  the  much  larger  class  of 
people  who  are  benevolently  misled  in  their  valu- 
ation of  the  influence  of  military  life  on  men. 
The  motives  of  this  class  are  usually  highly 
praiseworthy.  They  have  got  into  the  habit  of 
thinking  of  their  boys  in  uniform  with  such  gen- 
uine admiration  that  they  have  unconsciously 
become  a  prey  to  the  shallow  romanticism,  en- 
couraged by  a  literature  largely  based  on  fic- 
tions and  conventions,  that  equips  every  soldier 
with  imaginary  virtues,  and  finally  believes  in 
the  virtue  of  fighting  itself.  Yet  their  error  is 
not  the  less  dangerous  for  being  intelligible. 

From  my  own  experience  I  would  say  that,  in 
the  huge  majority  of  cases,  the  influence  of  war- 
fare on  a  combatant  results  in  a  considerable 
lowering  of  his  moral  level. 

Exceptions  are  fairly  numerous.  They  are 
mostly  to  be  found  in  the  class  of  those  who, 
having  taken  up  arms  out  of  a  well-considered 
conviction  of  the  justice  of  their  cause,  are  on  a 
sufficiently  high  intellectual  level  to  use  their 
experience  as  a  means  of  spiritual  self -improve- 
ment. 

I  do  not  know  how  large  a  percentage  of  the 
American  army  this  element  constitutes,  al- 
though I  am  sure  that  it  is  considerably  higher 
than  in  European  armies.  Besides,  the  bulk  of 
the  American  Expeditionary  Force  have  en- 
joyed the  privilege  of  taking  part  in  the  final 


HEROISM  183 

stages  of  the  campaign,  when  the  fast  movement 
of  events  and  the  continuous  activity  did  not 
allow  the  original  idealistic  colour  of  their  mo- 
tives to  fade  away  with  time.  They  have  not 
had  the  experience  of  year-long  trench  warfare 
which,  being  a  routine  by  itself,  developed  its 
peculiar  psychological  influence,  it  is  this  in- 
fluence which  has  been  the  dominating  factor 
with  the  vast  majority  of  European  armies  to 
which  I  am  referring. 

It  should  be  kept  in  mind,  besides,  that  the 
composition  of  European  armies,  with  their  com- 
pulsory enhstment  of  practically  all  men  up  to 
fifty  or  fifty-five  years  of  age,  was  very  different 
from  that  of  the  American  armies.  Many  an 
American  mother,  especially  amongst  the  upper 
classes,  will  have  shed  tears  of  joy  in  welcoming 
her  boy  back  home  from  the  front,  and  finding 
that  the  spoilt  child  had  become  a  strong,  hardy, 
wideawake  man.  No  doubt,  in  many  of  these 
cases,  the  physical  improvement  will  have  been 
accompanied  by  a  wholesome  strengthening  of 
the  character,  if  it  were  only  because  of  the 
effect  the  health  of  the  body  normally  has  upon 
the  health  of  the  soul.  A  similar  change  for  the 
better  has  imdoubtedly  taken  place  with  a  large 
number  of  young  Europeans,  to  whom  the 
change  from  a  sedentary  occupation  or  from 
comfortable  idleness  to  a  life  in  the  open  with 
plenty  of  exercise  has  been  a  real  boon.     Well- 


184,     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

to-do  people  are  often  inclined  to  infer,  by 
thoughtless  generalisation  from  their  experience 
within  a  limited  circle  of  relatives  and  acquaint- 
ances, that  this  is  equally  true  of  the  majority 
outside  of  their  particular  class.  They  forget 
that  this  majority,  in  Europe  at  any  rate,  con- 
sists of  peasants  and  working  men,  half  of  whom 
are  fathers  of  families  and  above  the  age  of 
twenty-eight.  They  had  not  the  same  need  of 
physical  exercise  or  life  in  the  open  as  the  gilded 
youth  of  the  upper  hundred  thousand.  To  them 
the  struggle  for  their  daily  bread  has  been  as 
good  a  school  of  self-help  and  self-reliance  as 
any.  It  is  this  class  that  forms  the  overwhelm- 
ing majority  of  the  population  of  Europe,  a 
majority  whose  attitude  of  mind  more  and  more 
becomes  a  decisive  element  in  the  evolution  of 
social  and  political  conditions  on  the  Old  Conti- 
nent. Therefore  we  should  try  to  understand 
their  mind  by  studying  it  from  a  different  view- 
point than  that  of  our  own  class  outlook. 

One  common  belief  is  that  the  necessities  of 
fighting  develop  a  courage  which  results  in  a 
lasting  and  beneficial  increase  of  will-power.  It 
is  this  romantic  attitude  of  the  civilian  mind  that 
sees  a  hero  in  every  man  in  uniform  and  there- 
fore believes  that  the  generation  of  the  Great 
War  is  going  to  be  of  a  superior  moral  quality. 

So  let  us  first  agree  on  what  heroism  is.  To 
kill  another  man  does  not  necessarily  make  one 


HEROISM  185 

a  hero;  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  a  commonplace 
truth  that  heroism  may  manifest  itself  in  other 
fields  than  fighting.  Heroism  is  a  capacity  of 
the  will  to  subjugate  impulses  or  circumstances 
adverse  to  the  fulfilment  of  a  duty  dictated  by 
conscience.  Any  victory  of  the  spirit  over  the 
flesh  fought  within  a  man's  mind  may  require 
heroism.  Captain  Guynemer  was  a  hero,  but  so 
were  Columbus,  Pasteur,  Abraham  Lincoln  and 
Beethoven.  And  some  of  the  finest  examples  of 
heroism  displayed  in  this  war  were  set  by  non- 
combatants  of  the  medical  service  or  among  the 
chaplains. 

The  commonest  form  of  heroism  in  war  is  vic- 
tory of  the  sense  of  duty  over  fear.  If  there 
were  a  man  who  has  fought  without  the  experi- 
ence of  fear,  I  would  not  call  him  a  hero  at  all, 
for  then  fighting  meant  no  more  to  him  than 
any  sporting  achievement.  But  I  doubt  whether 
such  a  man  has  ever  existed.  To  anybody  who 
has  frequently  been  under  fire  and  yet  claims 
that  he  has  never  been  afraid,  I  would  quote 
the  opinion  of  Marshal  Ney,  whose  record  is  a 
presumption  that  he  knew  something  of  the  sub- 
ject: Celui  qui  se  vante  de  'nf avoir  jamais  eu 
peur  est  un  sacre  jean-f outre. 

It  is  in  the  nature  of  contemporary  warfare, 
with  its  constant  menace  of  sudden  pain  and 
death  from  a  distant  and  mostly  invisible  enemy, 
to  make  fear  largely  dependent  on  imagination. 


186    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

It  is  not  in  the  brunt  of  battle  that  "funk"  is 
most  common,  for  then  action  itself  generates 
such  antidotes  as  anger  or  concentration  of  the 
mind  on  actual  events;  it  is  in  the  moments 
which  precede  action,  and  under  any  circum- 
stance that  makes  one  realize  the  omnipresence 
of  danger  without  the  resource  of  being  able  to 
do  anything  to  escape  from  it. 

I  do  not  feel  that  I  am  boasting  when  I  say 
that  my  record  at  the  front  is  not  that  of  a  cow- 
ard; for  I  believe  that  any  healthy  young  man 
with  normal  nerves  is  usually  able  to  check  his 
fear  to  a  sufficient  extent  so  as  not  to  be  ham- 
pered in  his  combatant  action.  So  there  is  but 
little  more  merit  in  not  being'  a  coward  than 
there  is  in  having  a  good  stomach.  Cowardice 
has  been  the  exception  in  any  of  the  armies  that 
were  engaged  in  the  Great  War;  and  in  nine 
out  of  ten  cases  when  it  occurred,  a  doctor,  even 
without  being  a  specialist  in  nervous  diseases, 
would  have  been  able  to  ascribe  it  to  some  defi- 
nite physiological  or  psychological  defect.  But 
fearlessness  is  just  as  exceptional. 

I  for  one  confess  that  there  has  been  hardly  a 
week  of  the  nearly  three  years  which  I  spent  at 
the  front  when  I  did  not  feel  "funk."  Some- 
times, even,  a  shrewd  observer  might  have  been 
able  to  discern  it  by  exterior  evidence,  from  the 
mere  nervous  chewing  of  a  pipe-stem  to  the  char- 
acteristic ghasthness  of  the  face  that  accompanies 


HEROISM  187 

"yon  funny  feeling  in  the  stomach"  which  often 
results  from  an  * 'increased  volume  of  the  enemy 
fire."  The  first  time  I  felt  it  was  right  in  the 
early  days  of  the  war,  when  my  company  started 
on  a  march  in  the  direction  of  distant  but  plainly 
audible  gunfire.  But  even  after  an  experience 
of  more  than  two  years,  I  still  suffered  from 
"funk,"  especially  when  I  had  to  remain  inac- 
tive under  a  bombardment.  I  might  even  say 
that  I  lived  in  a  state  of  chronic  fear,  for  there 
was  hardly  a  minute  when  I  was  free  from  the 
consciousness  of  danger  and  the  desire  to  reduce 
the  chances  of  being  hit.  When  I  walked  along 
a  communication  trench  I  would  always  keep  to 
the  safest  side,  and  when  passing  behind  a  low 
parapet,  I  would  be  careful  to  keep  my  head 
down  at  least  as  much  as  was  necessary,  even 
though  the  chances  of  being  hit  were  very  slight 
indeed.  It  is  largely  to  this  caution  that  I  as- 
cribe my  escaping  unhurt,  although,  as  the  ex- 
perience of  most  of  my  comrades  showed,  the 
odds  were  greatly  against  me. 

Now,  the  sort  of  precautions  I  just  referred  to 
were  by  no  means  generally  used  by  soldiers  and 
officers,  for  exactly  the  same  reasons  that  account 
for  the  recklessness  of  workmen  who  get  so  used 
to  the  dangers  of  their  profession  that  they  lose 
consciousness  of  them.  Most  of  those  who  were 
cautious,  on  the  other  hand,  were  so  under  the  in- 
fluence of  habit,  as  a  mere  acquired  reflex  action. 


188    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

It  was  otherwise  with  me,  for  the  consciousness  of 
danger  never  left  me  and  I  ahnost  continuously- 
used  reasoning  to  improve  my  chances  of  remain- 
ing unhurt.  This  even  developed  into  a  mania.  I 
often  caught  myself  carefully  weighing  in  my 
mind  all  the  chances  of  being  hit  by  some  missile 
in  some  particular  spot  as  compared  with  an- 
other spot  a  couple  of  yards  away,  taking  into 
account  almost  imponderable  circumstances,  to 
the  utmost  extent  of  my  intellectual  ability. 
The  disproportion  between  the  intellectual  effort 
and  the  irrelevancy  of  the  object  of  my  analysis 
often  struck  me  and  eventually  made  me  realise 
that  I  had  gotten  into  the  habit  of  using  reflec- 
tion as  a  means  to  bridle  my  imagination  and  to 
distract  fear.  I  have  known  a  few  other  sol- 
diers who  confessed  to  me  that  when  "alone  with 
their  thoughts"  in  some  more  or  less  dangerous 
spot  they  used  the  same  method.  They  also 
were  afflicted  with  a  power  of  imagination  above 
the  average.  It  is  worth  noting  that  the  fear 
they  would  have  felt  if  they  had  given  their 
fancy  the  rein  would  not  at  all,  in  view  of  the 
anodjTie  circumstances,  have  paralysed  or  han- 
dicapped them  for  action.  Therefore,  I  would 
rather  ascribe  this  desire  of  escaping  the  effects 
of  even  slight  fear  to  the  intuition  that  any  de- 
gree of  "funk"  results  in  considerable  nervous 
strain.  One's  instinct  to  save  himself  useless  fa- 
tigue made  one  naturally  try  to  avert  this. 


HEROISM  189 

With  the  large  majority  of  soldiers,  however, 
whose  power  of  imagination  did  not  exceed  the 
average,  and  in  whose  every-day  actions  indi- 
vidual reasoning  played  but  a  small  part,  there 
were  but  two  great  antidotes  to  fear:  habit  and 
anger. 

I  had  never  fully  realised  the  power  of  habit 
imtil  I  saw  the  miracles  it  worked  at  the  front. 
The  effect  of  heavy  shellfire,  for  instance,  that 
constantly  threatens  sudden,  cruel  laceration  by 
a  mass  of  steel  that  may  explode  anywhere  about 
you  without  any  forewarning,  is  beyond  expres- 
sion nerve-racking  to  any  normal  human  being. 
In  the  earlier  stages  of  the  -campaign,  the  effect 
on  our  brave  but  unprepared  troops  was  such 
that  a  position  was  usually  evacuated  as  "un- 
tenable" as  soon  as  any  volume  of  artillery  fire 
began  to  concentrate  around  it.  A  few  months 
later,  the  same  amount  of  shellfire  would  be 
faced  with  almost  absolute  equanimity.  I  re- 
member how  one  day  the  trench  mortar  positions 
I  commanded  had  been  shelled  to  such  an  ex- 
tent that  with  a  little  bad  luck  half  of  iny  men 
might  have  been  wiped  out.  Fortunately,  there 
was  no  worse  damage  than  the  explosion  of  a 
couple  of  tons  of  our  ammunition.  The  whole 
"show"  had  no  stronger  effect  on  my  men  than 
to  make  them  grumble  at  the  prospect  of  the 
work  they  would  have  to  do  with  sandbagging 
and  bomb-carrying.     For  myself,  I  felt  posi- 


190    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

tively  annoyed  at  the  thought  of  having  to  write 
a  long  report,  with  a  new  statement  of  my  re- 
serve of  ammunition,  by  the  light  of  a  flickering 
candle  under  the  three  feet  high  ceiling  of  my 
dug-out.  Then  I  smilingly  remembered  how 
Dumouriez  had  almost  lost  the  battle  of  Valmy, 
which  decided  the  fate  of  Europe  for  a  century 
or  so,  because  of  the  panic  created  by  the  ex- 
plosion of  an  ammunition  wagon.  This  proba- 
bly represented  about  one-twentieth  of  the  total 
amount  of  high  explosive  that  had  gone  up 
within  four  hundred  yards  of  me  within  less  than 
twenty  minutes,  with  no  other  result  than  that 
next  day's  Belgian  communiquS  would  perhaps 
mention  "lively  French  artillery  activity  about 
Steenstraete." 

Men  get  used  to  everything.  It  was  the  same 
with  rifle  bullets.  An  old-timer  would  always  be 
able  to  tell  a  novice  in  trench  life  by  some  in- 
stinctive motion — a  slight  ducking  of  the  head, 
or  a  glance  cast  aside,  as  if  he  expected  to  see 
the  bullet  pass — ^when  a  "blue  bee"  buzzed  near 
by.  Even  people  otherwise  used  to  trench  life, 
but  who  had  been  away  from  it  for  a  short  time, 
would  act  in  a  similar  way,  which  is  of  course 
senseless,  since  a  flying  bullet  is  invisible  and  you 
are  past  danger  when  you  hear  it.  It  usually 
does  not  take  more  than  a  quarter  of  an  hour  in 
the  trenches  to  realise  this,  and  then  less  atten- 


HEROISM  191 

tion  is  paid  to  bullets  than  to  the  humming  of 
an  insect. 

The  lower  the  level  of  intellect  and  imagina- 
tion, the  quicker  this  inuring  to  danger  will  be. 
I  have  often  noted  the  amazement  of  troops  bil- 
leted in  towns  that  were  frequently  bombarded, 
at  seeing  how  little  notice  the  civilian  inhabitants 
took  of  the  shelling.  One  would  see  the  women 
come  out  of  their  houses  to  watch  the  shellfire 
that  might  have  struck  them  dead  any  second. 
The  hasty  conclusion  of  the  military  onlooker 
usually  was  that  "these  people  knew  no  fear." 
A  wrong  inference,  for  these  same  women  had 
probably  all  been  seized  with  hopeless  panic  when 
their  town  was  first  bombarded.  But  afterwards 
they  got  used  to  it  all  the  easier  as  they  did  not 
realise  that  the  distribution  of  the  points  of  im- 
pact of  projectiles  aimed  at  an  area  that  in- 
cluded their  own  little  house  was,  within  the 
bounds  of  certain  mathematical  laws,  a  mere 
matter  of  luck.  Yet,  somehow,  they  would  not 
consider  themselves  as  being  threatened  until  a 
shell  hit  their  immediate  neighbours'  house  or 
dropped  in  their  own  garden.  Then,  although 
their  chances  were  no  worse  than  before,  they 
would  pack  their  bundle  and  leave.  I  have  wit- 
nessed this  sort  of  thing  dozens  of  times.  Every 
time  it  again  strengthened  my  conviction  that 
the  actions  of  the  majority  of  people  are  in- 
spired by  subconscious  forces,  like  instinct  and 


192    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

habit,  rather  than  by  reasoning,  even  though  but 
little  elementary  reasoning  be  required. 

In  actual  battle,  however,  this  familiarity  with 
danger  would  fail  to  make  soldiers  immune 
against  the  paralysing  influence  of  fear,  for 
danger  is  likely  then  to  assume  forms  novel  and 
unexpected,  even  to  veterans.  Yet  it  is  much 
easier  to  overcome  fear  in  action,  however  risky, 
than  when  one  has  to  stand  enemy  fire  without 
being  able  to  do  anjrthing  to  "return  the  com- 
pliment." In  actual  battle,  anger  and  hatred 
are  the  natural  antidotes  of  fear.  i 

Heroism  has  much  less  to  do  with  all  this  than 
romantic  people  are  prone  to  believe,  for  the 
actions  of  men  dominated  by  anger  mostly  lack 
that  essential  element  of  heroism,  consciousness. 
The  soldier  who  risks  his  life  in  an  attack  may 
be  a  hero  all  the  same,  for  he  may  have  been 
inspired  by  conscious  motives — patriotism,  de- 
votion to  humanity,  or  self-sacrifice  to  com- 
radeship— of  which  his  participation  in  this  bat- 
tle was  the  consequence  accepted  beforehand. 
Yet  in  the  huge  majority  of  cases  it  remains 
true  that  the  intensity  of  blind  impulses  like  an- 
ger or  desire  to  kill  is  so  great  in  the  thick  of 
the  fray  and  so  obliterates  consciousness  that 
there  is  more  scope  for  the  lowest  instincts  than 
for  the  highest. 

By  instincts  of  a  low  moral  order  I  mean 
those  that  are  not  directed  towards  a  social  pur- 


HEROISM  193 

pose  involving  some  personal  sacrifice  to  a  com- 
mon cause,  but  that  are  destructive  of  such  pur- 
pose and  of  life  generally.  Joy  in  killing  is 
such  an  instinct.  And  my  sad  experience  is  that 
it  is  this  instinct,  rather  than  any  of  the  higher 
impulses  of  heroism,  that  has  been  developed 
through  fighting. 

It  has  become  a  platitude  to  say  that  the  few 
centuries  of  cultured  life  that  have  been  the 
privilege  of  our  race  have  only  been  able  to  mod- 
ify some  of  the  outward  characteristics  of  the 
human  mind,  whilst  the  fundamental  instincts 
that  form  our  character  are  still  those  of  our 
ancestors,  the  cave  men. 

There  are  pessimists,  by  the  way,  who  infer 
from  this  that  our  increase  of  intellectual  power 
and  of  knowledge  has  merely  put  a  more  re- 
fined instrument  at  the  disposal  of  our  original 
bad  instincts,  and  adorned  our  native  brutality 
with  hypocrisy.  I  think  they  are  wrong,  how- 
ever, in  assuming  as  an  axiom  that  the  instincts 
of  the  prehistoric  man  were  bad.  On  the  con- 
trary, I  hold  the  optimistic  belief  that  the 
fundamental  instincts  of  our  race,  even  if  we  as- 
sume that  they  have  not  changed  since  our  an- 
cestors dwelt  in  caves  or  forests,  still  serve  the 
purposes  of  our  present  social  ethics  to  the  same 
extent  as  they  did  when  they  were  the  moral 
cement  of  the  earlier  forms  of  human  society. 
For  our  so-called  "scientific"  pessimists,  after 


194    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

all,  show  a  curiously  unscientific  want  of  appre- 
ciation of  the  social  ethics  of  early  human  com- 
munities and  the  individual  instincts  resulting 
therefrom.  They  assume  that  these  instincts 
were  confined  to  a  mere  brutal  desire  of  indi- 
vidual domination  and  joy  in  killing.  This  is 
not  even  true  of  the  most  primitive  forms  of 
social  life.  And  what  an  abyss  between  these 
cave-dwellers  and  the  incomparably  higher  level 
of  the  social  institutions  and  ethics  of  our  race 
during  the  many  centuries  that  immediately  pre- 
ceded Christian  civilisation !  Therefore,  I  do  not 
believe  that  the  solution  of  the  problem  of 
ethical  education  nowadays  consists  in  the  eradi- 
cation of  those  primitive  social  impulses  by  "in- 
tellectual enlightenment."  I  rather  see  it  as  a 
higher  synthesis  in  which  these  impulses  would 
be  utilised  and  progressively  brought  under  the 
control  of  conscience. 

This  programme  sounds  modest  enough  after 
nineteen  centuries  of  Christianity;  but  has  this 
war  not  again  made  clear  that  even  now,  in  spite 
of  Christian  ethics  and  political  democracy,  what 
we  pride  ourselves  on  as  civilisation  or  culture  is 
still  the  superficial  appanage  of  a  hundred  thou- 
sand, whilst  the  pittance  of  the  masses  consists  of 
a  few  crumbs  from  their  table?  This  is  as  true  in 
the  field  of  ethics  as  in  that  of  art,  knowledge 
or  hygiene.  Even  when  these  masses  follow  the 
lead  of  a  thinking  minority,  they  are  but  obeying 


HEROISM  195 

the  obscure  ancestral  instincts.  So  modern  de- 
mocracy, especially  since  the  Great  War  has 
made  these  masses  a  decisive  factor  in  history, 
still  finds  itself  confronted  with  the  old  problem : 
to  make  human  civilisation  a  real  civilisation  of 
all  men  and  women.  This  can  only  be  done  by 
providing  their  mass  instincts  with  the  conscious 
guidance  of  the  intellect.  Any  attempt,  based 
on  a  rationalistic  philosophy  or  on  Utopian  de- 
sires, to  impose  upon  these  masses  a  conception 
of  the  brain  or  an  ethical  imperative  contrary  to 
the  native  instincts  and  material  interests  that 
are  the  driving  power  of  their  common  actions, 
would  be  doomed  to  failure.  All  that  human 
intellect  can  do  at  our  present  stage  of  social 
progress  is  to  enlighten  those  collective  passions 
so  as  to  keep  them  from  being  destructive  of 
the  common  good.  Then  they  are  bound  to 
serve  progress.  If  even  this  scheme  does  not 
prove  too  ambitious,  we  shall  have  reason  enough 
to  congratulate  ourselves. 

Even  such  racial  instincts  as  result  from  the 
fighting  activity  of  our  ancestors,  normally  at 
war  with  animals,  their  neighbours  or  other 
tribes,  although  at  first  sight  they  seem  to  be 
destructive  of  life,  can  be  made  to  serve  the 
purpose  of  human  improvement.  For  this  im- 
provement is  a  dialectic  process  in  which  fighting 
qualities  are  required  of  those  on  whom  the  vic- 
tory of  progress  over  the  retrogressive  tenden- 


196     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

cies  depends.  Has  the  Great  War  for  "democ- 
racy and  a  lasting  peace"  not  proved  to  all  true 
Christians  that  "fighting  the  battles  of  the 
Lord"  is  more  than  a  figure  of  speech?  Is  not 
the  right  of  insurrection  a  cornerstone  of  all  the 
historic  statements  which,  like  the  American 
Declaration  of  Independence  or  the  French 
Droits  de  VHomme,  form  the  universal  charter 
of  democracy — a  democracy  born  of  the  exer- 
cise of  that  right?  Is  not  combativity,  the  con- 
tinuous exercise  of  the  "unalienable  right  to 
kick,"  within  the  organised  bounds  of  the  party 
system  as  without,  an  essential  condition  to  prog- 
ress in  any  self-governing  country,  and  part  of 
the  very  spirit  of  democracy?  Is  not  the  idea  of 
the  self-government  of  nationalities,  which  has 
triumphed  in  the  war  through  the  defeat  of  the 
dynastic  principle,  inseparable  from  the  desire  to 
defend  this  self-government  against  any  menace 
from  abroad?  Is  not  the  very  existence  of  a 
League  of  Civilised  Nations  conditioned  by  its 
readiness  to  fight  for  the  maintenance  of  its  con- 
stitutional pact  either  against  a  felonious  con^ 
federate,  or  against  the  aggression  of,  say,  a 
less  civilised  power  from  outside? 

And  on  the  other  hand,  have  not  our  inherited 
fighting  and  hunting  instinct,  through  combin- 
ing with  man's  intellectual  curiosity,  created  the 
spirit  of  adventure  to  which  modern  civilisation 


HEROISM  197 

owes  its  splendour,  its  wide  expansion,  and  its 
fast  progress? 

Are  not  those  instincts  the  psychological  basis 
of  the  sporting  life  which,  by  promoting  chivalry, 
fair  play,  modesty  in  triumph  and  dignity  in 
defeat,  proves  almost  as  great  a  benefit  to  the 
ethics  of  a  nation  as  to  its  bodily  health  ?  Do  we 
not  commonly  measure  any  man's  sense  of  hon- 
our by  his  readiness  to  fight  for  it,  whether  it  be 
with  his  sword,  his  fists,  or  with  the  means  that 
the  organisation  of  social  justice  and  public 
opinion  put  at  his  disposal? 

I  have  indulged  in  this  digression  because  I  do 
not  want  to  be  misunderstood  when  I  oppose 
joy  in  killing  as  a  morally  low  instinct  to  com- 
bative heroism  as  a  high  ethical  impulse.  Both 
are  the  outcome  of  those  fighting  instincts  we 
have  inherited  from  our  ancestors,  the  warriors 
and  hunters.  Both  have  been  fostered  by  the 
war.  The  combative  spirit  at  large  I  call  a  good 
instinct,  because  it  is  a  necessary  condition  to 
social  progress;  joy  in  killing  I  call  bad,  for  it 
is  destructive  of  social  life. 

yet  while  the  combative  spirit  that  makes  he- 
roes out  of  men  finds  a  natural  outlet  in  almost 
any  field  of  human  activity,  and  therefore  needed 
no  war  for  its  development,  the  old  slumbering 
instinct  that  makes  a  man  enjoy  his  power  to 
destroy  and  to  kill  has  been  called  back  to  life. 
This  war  has  aroused  it  in  millions  as  nothing 


198    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

else  could  have  done.  If  those  who  have  un- 
bridled it  could  but  know  how  immensely  power- 
ful it  is!  The  supreme  joy  it  gives  to  a  man 
who  reahses  his  power  to  hve  by  his  abihty  to 
take  another's  life,  calls  imperiously  for  repeti- 
tion, for  killing  again,  for  killing  more  and 
morel 

I  had  thought  myself  more  or  less  immune 
from  this  intoxication  until,  as  a  trench  mortar 
officer,  I  was  given  command  over  what  is  prob- 
ably the  most  murderous  instrument  in  modern 
warfare.  At  any  rate,  by  combining  the  de- 
structive power  of  heavy  artillery  with  the  close 
range  and  easy  observation  of  infantry  fighting, 
it  gives  one  the  most  intense  realisation  of  de- 
structive power.  One  day,  after  expending  a 
few  rounds  on  finding  the  range,  I  secured  a 
direct  hit  on  an  enemy  emplacement,  saw  bodies 
or  parts  of  bodies  go  up  in  the  air,  and  heard  the 
desperate  yelling  of  the  wounded  or  the  runa- 
ways. I  had  to  confess  to  myself  that  it  was 
one  of  the  happiest  moments  of  my  life.  "You 
didn't  half  look  funny  when  we  sent  them  Boches 
up,  lieutenant,"  said  my  observing  signaller  as 
he  sat  down,  rubbing  his  hands  contentedly,  to 
a  mug  of  coffee  in  my  dugout.  "Gosh!  didn't 
you  turn  pale,  and  didn't  you  just  open  big 
eyes,  and  didn't  you  yell — almost  as  loud  as 
them  Fritzes  themselves  what  runned  away!" 
The  fellow  was  right,  and  made  me  feel  ashamed 


HEROISM  199 

that  I  had  broken  my  golden  rule  never  to  show 
emotion  to  my  men.  But  then,  as  I  recollected 
those  minutes  so  crowded  with  thoughts  and 
events  that  they  leave  a  man  exhausted  of  nerv- 
ous strength,  I  realised  that  I  had  yelled  with 
delight,  that  I  could  have  wept  with  joy  and,  if 
I  had  dared  to,  kissed  the  man  next  to  me,  who 
was  as  excited  as  I.  What  are  the  satisfactions 
of  scientific  research,  of  a  successful  pubUc  activ- 
ity, of  authority,  of  love,  compared  with  this 
ecstatic  minute  when  you  see  how  your  brains, 
your  nerves,  your  careful  nursing  of  the  killing 
machine  entrusted  to  you  have  given  you  this 
power  to  take  hfe  away  from  those  who  are 
striving  to  take  it  away  from  you  I  Oh,  how 
tame  and  petty  seems  ordinary  life  in  compari- 
son with  this!  If  I  could  only  obey  the  will  of 
my  animal  instinct,  I  would  this  very  day  start 
on  a  journey  of  ten  thousand  miles  if  by  so  do- 
ing I  might  enjoy  something  analogous  to  a 
"direct  hit"  and  revive  the  rapture  of  those 
voluptuous  seconds. 

Now,  fortunately  enough,  I  have  to  obey  other 
voices  than  those  of  such  instincts,  and  so  do 
most  men ;  otherwise  we  should  all  be  rogues  and 
murderers.  As  soon  as  I  realised  the  bestiality'- 
of  my  joy,  my  conscience  felt  such  a  burning 
shame  that  its  impression  will  probably  be  as 
lasting  as  that  of  the  incident  that  caused  it. 
I  know  of  a  few  friends  who  have  similarly  suf- 


200     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

f ered,  and  felt  the  same  wave  of  remorse.  But  I 
also  know  that  the  majority  of  men  have  felt  the 
ecstasy  of  killing  without  this  sense  of  contri- 
tion. I  am  certain  that  by  -making  millions  of 
ignorant  peasants  and  laborers — ^whose  instincts 
have  never  known  any  law  but  their  interest 
and  the  commonly  accepted  traditions  of  their 
class — taste  the  brutish  delight  of  killing,  a 
phantom  has  been  conjured  up  more  easily  than 
it  will  be  banished.  Should  conditions  arise  in 
the  life  of  these  masses  that  either  make  it  in 
their  interest  to  murder,  or  else  create  a  common 
feeling  in  favour  of  class  terrorism,  they  might 
remember  how  easy  it*  is'  to-  take  another  man's 
life,  and  what  a  delight  there  is  in  doing  it. 
Criminality  in  Europe  is  already  alarmingly  on 
the  increase  since  the  beginning  of  demobilisa- 
tion; political  assassination  is  the  order  of  the 
day;  and  there  is  a  distinct  tendency  towards  the 
use  of  violence  in  the  social  upheavals  that 
threaten  to  spread  all  over  Europe.  It  is  true 
there  are  some  obvious  economic  causes  for  all 
this,  and  that  these  may  be  temporary,  but  the 
psychological  causes  are  perhaps  equally  impor- 
tant, and  they  will  last  at  least  as  long  as  the 
present  generation.  Who  would  not,  in  view  of 
these  facts,  be  seized  with  the  apprehension  that 
the  immediate  effect  of  the  war  on  the  masses 
who  fought  it  may  have  been  to  make  brutes 
rather  than  to  create  heroes  ? 


HEROISM  201 

As  far  as  the  Central  Powers  are  concerned, 
there  is  no  doubt  about  the  answer  to  this  ques- 
tion. Even  before  the  end  of  hostilities,  there 
was  already  a  terrific  increase  of  criminality,  es- 
pecially amongst  deserters  or  men  on  leave  from 
the  front,  and  amongst  the  adolescent  imitators  of 
their  elder  brothers  in  Feldgrau,  Besides,  the 
masses  of  the  civilian  population  were  constantly 
tempted,  or  even  compelled,  to  infringe  the  laws 
and  regulations  on  food  supplies  and  similar  sub- 
jects, not  based  on  conscious  popular  consent, 
but  imposed  by  the  ruling  powers.  The  com- 
plete disruption  of  the  normal  relationship  of  the 
sexes,  moreover,  resulted  in  a  veritable  moral 
dissolution  of  the  nation.  All  this  undoubtedly 
played  a  large  part  in  the  final  breakdown  of 
Germany  and  Austria-Hungary.  Similar  con- 
ditions would  already  have  resulted  in  similar 
results  in  Western  Europe  if  their  influence  had 
not  been  counteracted  by  the  higher  ethical  war 
aims,  which  eventually  proved  a  better  means  of 
keeping  up  both  morale  and  morals  than  any 
appeal  to  national  pride  and  lust  of  conquest. 
There  is  all  the  more  reason  to  fear  the  un- 
bridling of  the  beast  should  the  allied  govern- 
ments succumb  to  the  temptation  to  misuse  their 
victory,  forget  the  ideals  for  which  they  have 
made  a  generation  sacrifice  itself,  and  betray  the 
hope  of  a  better  world  that  they  have  awakened 
in  the  masses. 


202     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

It  is  self-evident  that  an  analysis  of  the  ethical 
reaction  of  actual  fighting  does  not  by  any  means 
exhaust  the  problem  of  the  influence  of  the  war 
on  human  psychology.  Even  if  we  confine  our 
analysis  to  the  armies,  we  should  keep  in  mind 
that  combatants  proper  form  a  minority  in  every 
one  of  them,  and  that  even  as  far  as  this  minor- 
ity is  concerned,  actual  fighting  was  only  one  of 
the  numerous  occupations  that  have  influenced 
their  frame  of  mind.  I  have  focussed  my  dis- 
paragement of  popular  romanticism  upon  the 
effect  of  fighting,  because  it  seems  to  me  that 
this  is  the  subject  on  which  clarification  is  most 
needed.  But  there  are  other  aspects  of  soldiers' 
psychology  which  I  cannot  extensively  dwell 
upon  here,  but  which  might  equally  well  be  taken 
as  objects  of  a  similar  analysis,  and  lead  to  a 
similar  conclusion.  There,  also,  it  would  be  quite 
different  from  widespread  misconceptions. 

One  of  these  is  the  belief  in  the  favorable  in- 
fluence of  discipline  on  the  formation  of  young 
men's  characters.  Now  there  are,  again,  two 
sides  to  this  question.  It  is  obvious,  on  the  one 
hand,  that  military  discipline  is  likely  to  have  a 
beneficial  effect  on  spoiled  children  and  on  the 
egotism  of  young  intellectuals.  In  a  more  gen- 
eral way,  every  soldier  has  had  so  many  oppor- 
tunities of  realising  what  a  paramount  necessity 
there  is  in  warfare  to  obey  the  orders  of  respon- 
sible leaders,  that  this  realisation  must  have  done 


HEROISM  203 

a  good  deal  to  stren^hen  the  spirit  of  self- 
sacrifice  for  common  purposes.  But  I  believe 
that  this  favourable  influence  is  at  least  balanced 
by  the  detrimental  effect  of  discipline  on  per- 
sonal initiative  and  activity.  This  at  any  rate 
applies  to  the  disciplinary  methods  that  prevailed 
in  continental  European  armies,  which  were  all 
more  or  less  inspired  by  the  Prussian  model.  My 
experience  with  soldiers  of  the  so-called  lower 
classes  has  taught  me  that  after  several  years  of 
military  discipline  they  will  have  lost  many  of 
the  qualities  that  are  required  of  good  and  useful 
citizens.  They  become  so  used  to  be  looked 
after  by  their  chiefs,  to  do  nothing  but  what  they 
are  ordered  to  do,  and  not  to  care  about  any- 
thing for  which  anybody  else  can  be  made  re- 
sponsible, that  they  lose  much  of  their  spirit  of 
initiative  and  self-reliance.  This  seems  to  be 
corroborated  by  the  actual  experience  of  many 
people  who  have  had  good  reason  to  complain 
about  the  indolence  of  discharged  soldiers  whom 
they  have  employed. 

Another  widespread  exaggeration  is  in  the 
belief  that  by  sending  millions  of  soldiers  into 
far-away  countries  a  very  great  deal  has  been 
doi^e  towards  spreading  knowledge  of  foreign 
languages  and  conditions,  widening  the  outlook, 
and  creating  new  bonds  of  friendship  between 
the  populations  of  the  allied  countries.  Now  it 
is  obvious  that  experience  of  foreign  countries 


204     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

has  been  gained,  new  ties  between  their  peoples 
created,  and  incentives  towards  the  learning  of 
foreign  languages  given  on  such  an  enormous 
scale  as  would  not  have  been  possible  but  for  this 
world  war.  But  it  will  be  wise,  I  think,  not  to 
be  too  sanguine  about  the  better  mutual  com- 
prehension of  national  civilisations  that  may- 
result  therefrom.  The  people  who  make  this 
mistake  have  no  accurate  representation  of  what 
the  actual  conditions  were  under  which  the  con- 
tact between  armies  and  populations  took  place. 
What  has  the  French  peasant  who  has  had  Tom- 
mies or  Sammies  billeted  in  his  farm,  or  the 
Italian  haberdasher  whose  customers  they  were, 
learned  about  Anglo-Saxon  civilisation?  The 
few  words  of  broken  English  which  these 
Frenchmen  or  Italians  have  picked  up  may  have 
helped  them  in  their  business — for  to  most  peo- 
ple in  the  war-area  with  whom  the  troops  came 
into  contact,  war  had  become  an  industry — but 
they  will  hardly  ever  become  an  instrument  of 
their  own  culture.  I  once  tried  to  get  out  of  a 
shrewd  old  Frenchwoman,  who  had  been  billet- 
ing British  officers  and  soldiers  for  a  couple  of 
years,  what  idea  she  had  formed  about  English 
ways  and  customs.  "They  are  not  bad  fellows. 
Sir,"  she  reflected,  "if  you  know  how  to  handle 
them;  but  surely  they  will  all  die  from  rheuma- 
tism, for  they  are  like  ducks,  they  bathe  and 
wash  everyday!"     From  a  fairly  extensive  ac- 


HEROISM  205 

quaintance  with  Flemish  and  French  towns 
where  British  troops  have  been  billeted,  I  would 
conclude  that  this  good  lady  voiced  the  appre- 
hensions of  their  inhabitants  in  general,  who 
from  the  "duck-habits"  of  the  occupants  have 
drawn  no  other  conclusion  than  that  it  results 
in  a  splashing-about  detrimental  to  the  fur- 
niture, especially  if  the  latter  is  of  polished 
mahogany. 

And  what  have  the  huge  majority  of  our  Tom- 
mies and  Sammies  seen  of  France  or  Belgium 
that  would  make  them  understand  and  love 
French  or  Belgian  civihsation?  Whenever  they 
could  escape  the  filthy  routine  of  billeting  and 
estaminet-sitting  in  the  wretched  little  towns  of 
the  front-area,  and  unless  they  confined  them- 
selves to  their  own  national  atmosphere  in  their 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  huts,  they  naturally  sought  solace  in 
the  shabby  soldiers'  entertainments  which  part  of 
the  population  in  the  larger  cities  had  made  it  a 
trade  to  provide.  These  could  no  more  give  them 
an  idea  of  what  is  really  worth  knowing  about 
the  indigenous  civilisation,  than  a  week's  outing 
in  the  cosmopolitan  amusement  quarters  of  Paris 
would  acquaint  an  upper-class  American  or 
Enghshman  with  the  spiritual  life  of  France. 

In  many  cases  the  contact  between  the  civihan 
population  and  the  armies  of  another  country 
has  resulted  in  strengthening  their  sense  of  the 
excellence  of  their  own  national  peculiarities,  in- 


206     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

stead  of  reducing  the  difTerences.  The  relations 
between  Belgium  and  France  are  so  excellent 
and  intimate  that  there  is  hardly  any  risk  of  being 
misinterpreted  when  I  say  that  my  pretty  ex- 
tensive experience  has  convinced  me  that  this 
has  been  the  case  with  these  two  nations.  Almost 
without  any  exceptions,  the  Belgian  soldiers  and 
refugees  who  spent  the  duration  of  the  war  in 
France  have  neither  increased  their  own  appre- 
ciation of  the  national  characteristics  that  differ- 
entiate the  French  from  them,  nor  have  they  in- 
duced the  French  to  do  the  same  with  regard  to 
the  Belgians. 

Let  us  examine  facts  instead  of  indiscrimi- 
nately taking  for  granted  sentimental  platitudes 
which  fit  better  into  diplomatic  speeches  than  into 
reality.  Then  we  shall  realise  that  more  would 
have  been  done  towards  a  greater  mutual  com- 
prehension between,  say,  the  peoples  of  England 
and  France  by  sending  a  few  thousand  students, 
artists,  engineers,  or  workingmen  from  one  coun- 
try into  the  other  for  a  couple  of  years,  to  get 
acquainted  with  real  Ufe  and  civilisation  in  the 
Universities,  Museums  and  workshops,  than 
could  be  achieved  by  any  Expeditionary  Force. 

I  have  been  asked  many  a  time  by  clergymen, 
especially  in  America,  whether  I  thought  that 
the  war  had  deepened  the  spiritual  consciousness 
of  most  of  the  soldiers  and  made  them  more  re- 
ligious.    I  would  myself  call  this  question  the 


HEROISM  207 

supreme  test  of  the  psychological  influence  of 
the  war  on  combatants,  provided  that  religion  be 
taken  in  such  a  broad  sense  that  it  becomes 
almost  synonymous  with  idealism.  But  then  the 
problem  becomes  so  vast  that  I  dare  not  answer 
by  yea  or  nay.  There  are  so  many  contradictory 
influences  involved,  and  their  relative  impor- 
tance varies  so  much  according  to  the  individu- 
als or  groups  concerned,  that  I  confess  myself 
unable  to  discern  what  the  ultimate  balance  will 
be.  I  would  however  dissuade  people  from 
overestimating  the  favourable  effect  of  con- 
stant danger  to  life  on  the  spiritual  attitude  of 
soldiers. 

It  is  a  popular  notion,  in  Europe  at  any  rate, 
that  people  whose  occupation  constantly  con- 
fronts them  with  a  danger  that  makes  them  seem 
like  toys  in  the  hands  of  a  supernatural  and  eter- 
nal power,  thereby  become  particularly  religious. 
Sailors  and  deep-sea  fishermen  are  the  classical 
instances.  It  is  often  inferred  that  this  must 
especially  apply  to  combatant  soldiers.  I  doubt 
very  much,  however,  whether  it  is  not  merely 
superstition  that  in  these  cases  is  commonly 
assumed  to  be  religion.  From  my  experience 
with  Flemish  and  French  deep-sea  fishermen,  I 
would  say  that  their  attachment  to  the  symbols 
of  ancestral  cult,  their  idolatry  of  innumerable 
saints,  and  the  omnipotence  of  their  local  clergy 


208     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

are  less  in  favour  of  their  religious  turn  of  mind 
than  the  general  level  of  their  morality  is  against 
it.  I  fail  to  see  why  the  case  of  the  soldiers  should 
be  different. 

On  the  whole,  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that 
whilst  the  spiritual  life  of  a  minority  who  were 
truly  religious  from  the  outset  may  have  been 
deepened  by  their  experience  of  war,  the  great 
majority  have  not  had  enough  native  ideahsm 
to  counteract  the  brutalising  influence  of  the 
circumstances  they  have  to  live  in.  This  ma- 
jority have  reacted  to  the  hardships  and  the  un- 
certainty of  life  by  seeking  solace  in  an  essen- 
tially materialistic  fatalism,  accompanied  by  an 
inordinate  desire  for  coarse  physical  enjoyment 
whenever  the  slightest  opportunity  occurred. 
When  going  on  short  leave  from  the  front,  for 
instance,  the  general  disposition  of  mind  was  to 
"have  a  good  time"  at  any  cost;  and  so-called 
pleasures,  which  under  ordinary  circumstances 
would  have  disgusted  a  man  by  their  vulgarity 
or  immorality,  were  then  excused  with  the  argu- 
ment that  perhaps  it  was  the  "last  chance,  any- 
way." 

This  was  the  case,  at  any  rate,  with  the  bulk 
of  the  continental  armies,  who  had  not,  like 
the  Americans  and,  in  the  later  stages  of  their 
campaign,  the  British,  the  resource  of  the  mag- 
nificent network  of  organisations  of  the  Y.  M. 
C.  A.  type,  which  have  proved  one  of  the  mira- 


HEROISM  209 

cles  of  this  war.  Anybody  with  some  experience 
of  the  front  will  understand  that  the  natural  re- 
action to  months  and  years  of  danger,  hardships, 
sexual  continence,  and  privation  of  practically 
any  sort  of  entertainment,  is  anything  but  an  in- 
ducement to  spiritual  self-communing.  I  am 
afraid  that  the  exceptions  to  this  rule  are  few. 
In  spite  of  the  pains  I  took  not  to  miss  the  intel- 
lectual and  spiritual  benefit  of  my  experiences, 
I  would  not  even  unreservedly  claim  the  favor  of 
this  exception  on  my  own  .behalf.  Life  at  the 
front  has  made  me  superstitious  to  the  extent 
that  even  now  I  find  it  hard  not  to  ascribe  my 
good  luck  to  some  "mascot"  or  other  talisman  in 
which  I  confess  to  have  believed.  I  have  often 
caught  myself,  just  before  passing  a  peculiarly 
dangerous  spot,  in  the  act  of  straightening  my 
deportment,  fingering  the  buttons  of  my  uniform 
to  make  sure  that  they  were  all  right,  and  reflect- 
ing whether  I  had  shaved  recently  enough  to  meet 
death  as  a  smart  soldier;  but  at  such  moments  I 
gave  no  thought  to  my  conscience.  I  remember 
how,  being  on  leave  in  Paris  once  after  a  partic- 
ularly severe  spell  at  the  front,  I  felt  tempted 
by  the  programme  of  a  classical  concert  that  was 
to  be  given  that  afternoon  by  a  renowned  sym- 
phonic orchestra.  I  thought  it  would  do  me 
good,  for  I  had  not  heard  any  music  but  soldiers' 
songs  and  ragtime  improvisations  for  more  than 
two  years.     So  I  went  there  and  listened  for  a 


210     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

couple  of  hours  to  Bach,  Beethoven,  and  Mozart. 
I  could  have  wept  for  delight  in  feehng  like  a 
human  being  again.  It  was  as  though  I  had  sud- 
denly been  reheved  of  the  armour  which  had  be- 
come identified  with  myself  for  two  long  years. 
But  after  it  was  over  it  seemed  to  me  that  all  my 
strength  had  been  taken  away  from  me  together 
with  my  armour,  and  that  it  would  hurt  me  be- 
yond expression  to  put  it  on  again.  I  never  felt 
so  womanish  and  altogether  so  miserable  in  my 
life.  Then  I  reaUsed  that  it  did  not  do  a  trench 
mortar  officer  a  bit  of  good  to  cultivate  "soft 
spots"  by  worshipping  musical  beauty.  All  he 
had  to  do  was  to  win  the  war  by  killing  "Boches." 
The  less  he  was  a  human  being,  the  better  he 
would  be  suited  for  his  job — and  there  was  no 
other  j ob  worth  doing  until  the  war  was  won.  So 
I  concluded  that  next  time,  rather  than  concert- 
going,  I  would  spend  my  money  on  a  good  din- 
ner with  a  big  bottle  of  wine,  to  make  up  for  four 
months  of  poor  meals  and  gather  strength  for 
another  four  months  (perhaps — "touch  wood!") 
to  come. 

I  am  perfectly  aware  that  this  will  seem 
supremely  silly  to  many  people.  But  then  per- 
haps they  do  not  care  for  good  music  as  much  as 
I  do — or  else  they  have  never  fired  a  trench  mor- 
tar. Under  these  circumstances  it  has  cost  me 
some  very  hard  fighting  with  myself  not  to  lose 
my  religion,  or  shall  I  say  my  idealism  if  the  for- 


HEROISM  211 

mer  term  seems  inappropriate  to  describe  the 
spiritual  attitude  of  a  man  haughty  enough  to 
think  his  reUgion  too  big  for  the  size  of  any 
church  or  chapel.  I  doubt  indeed  whether  the 
war  has  not  made  me  lose  some  of  the  human 
modesty  that  is  the  fundamental  attitude  of  mind 
required  by  any  Church.  I  can  still  feel  modest 
when  I  look  up  to  a  starlit  sky,  or  for  that  matter, 
when  I  lie  down  in  the  grass  and  stare  at  the 
flowers  and  the  insects — but  I  find  it  very  hard 
to  bow  my  head  to  any  living  human  being  or  to 
any  of  their  works.  This  kind  of  modesty  has 
been  shelled  out  of  me.  I  am  quite  prepared  to 
admit  that  this  is  probably  a  moral  loss ;  but  then 
this  is  no  boast,  but  a  confession.  I  merely  think 
it  necessary  to  make  it,  because  I  know  that  the 
same  thing  has  happened  to  many  men  of  a  sim- 
ilar turn  of  mind  who  have  been  through  the  same 
experience. 

Perhaps  this  class  of  men  will  be  able  to  have 
some  influence  on  the  thoughts  of  the  post-war 
generation.  If  so,  I  think  that  their  rehgion 
will  be  the  belief  in  the  infinite  perfectibility  of 
mankind  through  the  acceptance  of  Christian 
ethics.  But  I  do  not  think  that  they  will  be  in- 
chned  to  favour  the  claims  of  any  Church  to  a 
monopoly  of  spiritual  truth.  On  the  contrary, 
I  venture  to  predict  an  increase  either  in  the 
number  of  men  who  say  with  Schiller  that,  be- 
cause they  are  religious,  they  do  not  belong  to 


212     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

any  religion,  or  in  the  movement  that  by  hberal- 
ising,  modernising  and  humanising  the  Churches, 
tends  to  suppress  the  differences  between  them 
and  identify  all  creeds  with  the  religion  of 
Christian  mankind. 


IX 


IN  THE  LAND   OF  DESPOTISM 

Vor   dem    Sklaven,   wenn    er    die    Kette   bricht, 
Vor  dem  freien  Menschen  erzittert  nicht! 

ScHiLLEB,  Die  Worte  des  Olaulens, 

In  the  Summer  of  1916,  my  mental  crisis  reached 
a  climax.  A  painful  intellectual  isolation  was 
tl^p  price  I  had  to  pay  for  my  determination  to 
judge  critically  for  myself  opinions  and  imper- 
atives that  were  accepted  as  matters  of  course  by 
everybody  around  me.  I  had  many  excellent 
comrades  at  the  front,  but  I  never  had  the  good 
fortune  to  find  a  friend  to  whom  I  could  unbosom 
all  my  thoughts  and  doubts.  This  was  probably 
for  the  best,  in  so  far  as  it  compelled  me  to  think 
entirely  by  myself,  and  faciUtated  by  emancipa- 
tion from  many  conventional  beliefs.  But  it  also 
caused  me  great  distress,  for,  as  all  reasoning  has 
a  tendency  to  question  its  own  conclusions,  my 
mind  left  to  itself  always  found  new  doubts  con- 
tinually to  arise  as  soon  as  I  thought  that  I  had 
reached  provisional  certitude. 

What  made  the  matter  worse  was  that  already 
for  some  months  I  had  ceased  to  find  satisfaction 
in  the  fulfilment  of  my  duties  as  haison  officer 
with  a  British  infantry  division.    Work,  though 

213 


214    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

plentiful  and  varied  at  the  beginning,  had  become 
very  scarce,  and  the  job  which,  although  not  ex- 
actly "safe,"  provided  me  from  the  outset  with  a 
comparatively  large  amount  of  comfort  and  inde- 
pendence, had  become  too  easy  for  my  taste. 
Charming  though  the  company  of  my  British  of- 
ficer comrades  was,  I  longed  to  go  back  to  "my 
boys"  and  experience  again  the  exhilaration  of 
responsibility  and  command.  Besides,  I  had  from 
the  beginning  looked  upon  my  military  career  as 
an  opportunity  for  self-education  of  which  I 
must  avail  myself  to  the  utmost,  and,  for  this 
reason,  I  wished  to  vary  my  occupation  as  often 
as  I  could.  So  when  an  appeal  was  made  to 
Belgian  infantry  officers  to  volunteer  for  new 
trench-mortar  batteries  that  were  just  being 
formed,  I  sent  in  my  application  and  was  trans- 
ferred a  few  weeks  afterwards  to  the  Belgian 
trench-mortar  battery  with  which  I  remained 
until  I  left  the  front  for  good. 

I  had  selected  this  post  because — save  for  fly- 
ing, for  which  I  was  above  age — it  seemed  the  one 
that,  in  trench  warfare  at  least,  promised  the 
greatest  amount  of  activity  and  "liveliness."  I 
wanted  to  be  kept  busy  so  as  to  have  httle  oppor- 
tunity for  thinking;  and,  besides,  I  wanted  to 
remain  true  to  my  principle — never  to  do  half- 
heartedly a  thing  that  has  once  been  recognised 
as  a  duty,  but  to  concentrate  all  my  strength  on 
obtaining  the  maximum  effect. 


THE    LAND    OF   DESPOTISM    215 

My  state  of  mind  at  that  time  was  accurately 
epitomised  in  a  letter  to  a  friend  to  whom  I 
wrote : 

"In  spite  of  my  critical  attitude  towards  the 
popular  views  on  the  ethics  of  this  war,  I  have 
never  felt  any  real  difficulty  in  doing  my  duty  as 
a  soldier.  On  the  contrary,  I  think  I  may  say  I 
have  always  done  it  eagerly;  but  not  with  the 
eagerness  that  results  from  what  is  generally 
considered  as  patriotic  enthusiasm.  You  know 
that  my  patriotism  has  always  been  very  differ- 
ent from  the  common  brand  of  jingoism.  I  think 
war  a  horrible  thing;  I  do  not  hate  the  Germans 
individually;  and  I  do  not  consider  this  war  of 
the  Entente  Powers  (which  include  Russian 
Czardom)  against  the  Central  Powers  as  a  strug- 
gle of  everything  that  is  good  against  everything 
that  is  bad.  I  can  see  quite  plainly  that  it  is 
merely  a  struggle  between  two  imperialistic 
groups ;  but  I  see  equally  plainly  that  one  of  these 
two  groups  is  much  more  guilty,  and  above  all, 
much  more  dangerous  than  the  other.  So  my 
eagerness  to  fight  simply  results  from  the  fact 
that,  having  once  selected  a  line  of  conduct  dic- 
tated by  my  own  judgment,  at  this  tragical  junc- 
ture in  the  world's  history  when  the  sacrifice  of 
milHons  of  lives  is  unavoidable,  I  must  give  my- 
self up  entirely,  with  all  the  energy  and  the 
enthusiasm  in  my  power,  to  the  task  which  I  have 
recognised  as  necessary.     So  much  the  worse  if 


216     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

this  duty  necessitates  the  sacrifice  of  life,  but  it 
is  obvious  that  this  duty  cannot  be  well  done  un- 
less this  sacrifice  be  consented  to  in  advance.  No 
haggling  is  possible  here.  Once  circumstances 
which  have  proved  stronger  than  we  (and  what 
have  we  left  undone  to  prevent  them?)  have  put 
us  on  a  road  which  we  must  follow,  we  must  walk 
along  it  resolutely,  without  looking  backward, 
and  until  the  bitter  end.  Germany  must  not  win 
this  war.  A  victorious  Germany  would  be  the 
worst  of  all  possible  disasters,  for  the  German 
people  themselves  as  well  as  for  the  whole  world. 
German  mihtarism  must  be  defeated.  Under 
what  circumstances  and  in  what  proportion  will 
the  pressure  from  within  Germany  co-operate 
with  the  pressure  from  without?  That  I  do  not 
know.  But  I  am  convinced  that  the  only  thing 
which  can  possibly  call  forth  this  pressure  from 
within — which  I  consider  as  an  absolute  neces- 
sity— is  the  defeat  of  the  German  Army.  This 
we  can  accompUsh  if  we  will,  even  though  it  takes 
a  few  more  years.  But  it  will  take  less  than  that 
if  we  will  strongly  enough  .  .  .  Your  advice 
"spare  yourself"  is  superfluous.  I  do  not  look 
upon  war  as  a  sporting  exercise.  I  do  not  seek 
after  the  rapture  of  danger  subdued,  and  I  never 
expose  myself  uselessly.  But  I  do  not  think  that 
anybody  has  a  right  to  consider  his  own  life  as 
more  precious  than  his  neighbour's.  I  am  con- 
Yuiced,  moreover,  that  nobody's  life  has  any  value 


THE    LAND    OF   DESPOTISM    217 

at  all  except  what  it  acquires  by  its  use  under  all 
circumstances  for  the  common  good  of  mankind. 
Well,  then,  at  the  present  time,  and  as  far  as  I 
am  concerned,  I  cannot  think  of  any  other  pos- 
sible use  of  hfe  than  the  fulfilment  of  mihtary 
duty  with  the  maximum  of  fighting  efficiency 
obtainable."* 

Thus  my  state  of  mind  remained  until  the 
spring  of  1917.  My  expectation  that  my  posi- 
tion as  a  trench-mortar  officer  on  the  Belgian 
front  would  distract  me  from  hypercritical  think- 
ing and  set  my  conscience  at  rest,  proved  on  the 
whole  justified.  One  did  not  have  much  time  to 
brood  over  war-aims  even  when  things  were 
quiet.  The  immediate  concerns,  how  to  keep 
warm  and  how  to  snatch  an  hour's  rest  in  the 
corner  of  a  dug-out,  required  nearly  all  the  intel- 
lectual concentration  of  which  a  tired  man  is 
capable. 

My  thoughts  were  almost  entirely  occupied 
with  my  men.  I  had  been  extremely  lucky,  for 
the  some  200  boys  of  my  battery  were  all  thor- 
oughly good  and  devoted  fellows  without  a  single 
black  sheep  amongst  them.  I  was,  therefore, 
able  to  maintain  discipline  and  the  high  standard 
of  fighting  efficiency  required  for  trench-mortar 
work,  without  ever  having  to  punish  or  even  to 
give  formal  commands.  We  loved  each  other 
and  knew  it,  although  circumstances    (no  soft 

*  From  a  letter  to  Mr.  Louis  de  Brouck&re,  dated  August  3rd, 
1916. 


218     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

spots!)  did  not  allow  any  demonstration  of  feel- 
ing. I  dreaded  to  show  them  even  a  passing 
affectionate  glance  of  the  eyes,  lest  they  should 
cease  to  beheve  in  my  supreme  indifference  to 
anything  but  duty  and  reaHse  how  much  it  cost 
me  to  send  them  to  their  deaths.  Fortunately, 
they  were  all  so  magnificently  brave  that  they 
required  nothing  but  warnings  to  be  cautious.  I 
know — although  they  never  said  a  word  about 
it — they  were  very  grateful  for  my  efforts  to 
create  welfare  institutions  in  the  battery,  such  as 
a  library,  a  canteen,  a  transportable  bath,  a  whole 
equipment  for  games  and  sporting  exercises,  a 
band,  courses  for  the  illiterate,  and  many  other 
things.  I  was  amply  rewarded  for  these  efforts 
by  the  joy  I  felt  in  commanding  men  under  such 
exceptionally  satisfactory  conditions,  and  find- 
ing that  they  responded  to  my  will  like  the 
strings  of  a  well-tuned  musical  instrument  to  the 
fingers  of  an  artist. 

To  this  period,  and  especially  to  the  winter 
of  1916-17  spent  in  the  Steenstrate  and  Dixmude 
sectors  under  extremely  trying  circumstances,  I 
owe  the  full  realisation  of  the  true,  deep  happi- 
ness that  authority  over  men  can  bring  when  it 
is  based  on  mutual  trust  and  sympathy.  To  me, 
there  was  no  greater  joy  in  military  life  than 
this;  and  there  is  a  very  simple,  but  obviously 
heartfelt  letter  which  I  received  one  day  from 
the  mother  of  one  of  my  men,  of  which  I  am 


THE    LAND    OF   DESPOTISM    219 

prouder  than  of  the  crosses  presented  to  me  by- 
King  Albert  and  King  George. 

Then  came  the  Russian  revolution  and  the  en- 
trance of  the  United  States  into  the  war.  A  new 
epoch  opened,  and  many  of  the  riddles  to  which 
I  had  so  far  only  found  a  provisional  answer 
were  going  to  be  solved.  My  conscience  would 
no  longer  need  to  be  drugged  by  the  weariness 
that  comes  from  excessive  physical  hardships. 

The  first  intimation  of  the  new  era  that  was  at 
hand  came  to  me  on  a  happy  frosty  February 
morning — I  think  it  was  the  5th  of  February, 
1917 — when  I  got  hold  of  a  copy  of  the  London 
Times  just  left  behind  by  a  British  officer  in 
my  billet.  It  contained  the  text  of  President 
Wilson's  address  to  the  United  States  Senate 
on  the  22nd  of  January,  1917. 

When  I  was  in  America  in  1918,  I  found  that 
very  few,  if  any,  of  President  Wilson's  own 
countrymen  realised  the  full  meaning  of  the  posi- 
tion he  has  acquired  in  the  opinion  of  the  intel- 
lect of  Europe  from  the  time  of  that  address.  In 
his  own  country,  where  he  is  a  party  leader  as 
well  as  the  President,  and  where,  may  be,  people 
sec  him  at  too  close  quarters  to  realise  his  magni- 
tude as  a  power  in  the  world's  history,  I  have 
found  his  image  distorted  with  friend  and  foe 
ahke,  by  partisanship  and  by  personal  sympathy 
or  antipathy.  Perhaps,  on  the  other  hand,  our 
opinion  in  Europe  is  too  much  ideahzed  by  dis- 


220     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

tance  to  permit  of  an  accurate  judgment  of  the 
man  Woodrow  Wilson ;  but,  at  the  same  time,  I 
think  it  allows  us  all  the  better  to  discern  the 
great  historical  features  of  his  character. 

It  is  possible,  moreover,  that  in  this  case,  our  il- 
lusions matter  more  than  the  reality.  What  many 
Americans  deplore  as  his  excessive  wilfulness 
appears  to  us  as  the  incarnation  of  the  youthful 
energy  of  a  great  democracy  moving  forward 
along  a  clear-cut  direct  line  of  progress.  We 
contrast  it  favourably  with  the  wavering  attitude 
of  our  leading  European  statesmen.  I  heard 
other  Americans  insinuate  that  there  was  a  good 
deal  of  demagogy  in  his  advocacy  of  the  cause 
of  the  "Great  Unwashed."  This  is  altogether 
incomprehensible  to  Europeans,  to  whom  Mr. 
Wilson's  policy  appears  as  a  model  of  uncom- 
promising ideahsm  and  almost  scientific  probity, 
when  we  compare  it  even  with  that  of  the  best 
among  the  leaders  of  our  lawyer-ridden  govern- 
ments. Others  again  contemptuously  called  him 
a  professor  who  is  fitter  to  teach  and  argue  than 
to  act  and  govern.  Not  so  does  he  appear  to 
Europeans,  who — rightly  or  wrongly — identify 
the  thorough-going  intervention  of  America  in 
the  war  with  the  farsighted  practical  ability  of 
the  President.  But  even  though  he  were  noth- 
ing but  a  herald  of  ideas  and  principles,  leaving 
others  to  do  the  acting  for  him,  he  would  still 
appear  to  democratic  Europe  as  the  man  who 


THE    LAND   OF   DESPOTISM   221 

gave  the  lead  in  a  world's  crisis  when  all  our  own 
statesmen  were  muddling  in  hopeless  confusion, 
reduced,  even  in  their  advocacy  of  ideal  war-aims, 
to  expedients  so  obviously  opportunist  and  so 
frequently  in  contradiction  with  reality  that 
everybody  ceased  to  believe  in  such  men's  sincer- 
ity and  even  in  their  capacity  to  think  beyond 
the  needs  of  the  moment.  The  old  Continent 
needed  the  leadership  of  a  man  who,  even  though 
he  should  be  no  more  than  an  exponent  of  ideas, 
would  give  the  straggling  and  dispirited  forces 
of  European  democracy  unity  and  certainty  of 
purpose.  This  alone  could  transform  the  war 
from  a  blind  desperate  struggling  for  uncertain 
aims  and  under  discredited  leaders,  into  a  su- 
preme fight  for  the  maintenance  of  political 
democracy  and  the  universal  application  of  na- 
tional self-government. 

Only  those  who  know — and  very  few  people 
seem  to  realise  it  even  now — in  what  a  hopeless 
state  of  moral  confusion  Western  Europe  was 
floundering  imtil  the  first  months  of  1917,  can 
understand  how  the  democratic  forces  of  Europe, 
who  alone  had  still  the  latent  strength  to  bring 
about  a  decision,  were  inspirited  by  the  voice  that 
called  from  across  the  Atlantic.  The  material 
resources  of  the  Entente  powers  were  so  immeas- 
urably greater  than  those  of  Germany  and  her 
allies,  that  the  war  would  have  been  won  before 
1917,  if  it  had  merely  been  a  matter  of  man- 


222     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

power,  natural  wealth  and  material  equipment. 
The  obvious  lack  of  unity  and  far-sightedness  in 
the  strategy  of  the  Entente  powers,  as  contrasted 
with  that  which  autocratic  control  and  an  iron 
militarism  gave  their  opponents,  was  due,  how- 
ever, to  something  far  more  vital  than  mere  geo- 
graphical reasons  or  the  supposed  inability  or 
treachery  of  leaders.  It  was  the  expression  of 
the  lack  of  moral  unity  that  prevailed  until  the 
downfall  of  Russian  Czardom  and  the  assump- 
tion of  the  leadership  of  universal  democracy  by 
President  Wilson. 

Democracy  and  labour  in  Western  Europe 
were  already  fighting,  it  is  true,  for  the  main- 
tenance of  national  institutions  more  democratic 
than  those  of  Germany ;  but  to  do  this,  they  had 
to  yield  up  all  real  power  to  elements  of  whom 
the  bulk  had  always  been  the  deadhest  foes  of 
democracy  and  political  freedom,  and  the  most 
dangerous  advocates  of  autocracy,  militarism  and 
imperiahsm,  in  their  own  countries.  Govern- 
ments were  claiming  that  they  were  fighting  for 
justice,  freedom,  and  the  emancipation  of  op- 
pressed nationalities;  yet  at  the  same  time  they 
were  intriguing  behind  the  scenes  to  prepare  a 
partition  of  the  spoils  of  victory  which  would 
have  been  an  outrage  to  these  very  principles. 
Many  of  the  elements  who  advocated  a  war  of 
destruction  proved  to  be  financially  interested  in 
its  duration  in  the  same  way  as  the  Krupps  and 


THE    LAXD    OF   DESPOTISM    223 

Skodas  who  pursued  a  similar  policy  on  the  other 
side.  With  some  of  these  so-called  enemies  they 
continued  to  have  joint  interests.  Other  im- 
perialistic elements,  who  had  had  their  share  of 
responsibihty  in  bringing  about'  the  conditions 
that  made  the  war  possible,  were  trying  almost 
openly,  whilst  still  exciting  the  masses  against 
Germany  with  the  help  of  democratic  slogans,  to 
come  to  terms  with  her  rulers  in  a  way  that  would 
have  cemented  a  Holy  Alliance  of  European  im- 
periahsm  and  reaction  against  the  world's  de- 
mocracy. In  short,  European  democracy  was 
demoralised  and  reduced  to  impotence  by  mutual 
distrust  and  by  the  lack  of  a  power  to  lead  it 
whose  motives  would  be  more  above  suspicion 
than  those  of  any  European  Government.  If  I 
have  dwelt  so  extensively  on  my  own  doubts  and 
hesitations  during  the  first  two  and  a  half  years 
of  the  war,  it  is  merely  because  they  give  an 
image  of  the  state  of  mind  of  most  lovers  of  de- 
mocracy in  Europe  at  that  time,  to  whom  the 
general  uncertitude  and  confusion  of  aims  of  the 
Entente  Powers  left  no  other  resource  but  to 
cling  to  the  theory  of  the  lesser  evil  and  to  the 
idea  of  a  defensive  war  for  the  maintenance  of 
their  home  institutions. 

This  is  why  I  had  but  two  days  of  real  happi- 
ness at  the  front.  The  first  was  that  February 
day.  when  I  read  President  Wilson's  address, 
formulating  a  constructive  programme  to  the  end 


224.    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

that  from  this  war  should  arise  universal  democ- 
racy and  the  independence  of  nations,  A  lump 
came  into  my  throat  at  the  idea  that  henceforth 
I  need  no  longer  fear  I  was  going  to  die  for  a 
miserable  delusion. 

Then,  a  few  weeks  later,  in  the  trenches  before 
Dixmude,  I  learned  that  the  first  great  step 
towards  this  goal  had  been  made  in  Russia,  and 
that  from  then  on  there  was  a  clear-cut  issue  be-  / 
tween  the  last  remaining  autocratic  powers  in 
Central  Europe,  and,  arrayed  against  them,  all 
the  self-governing  nations  of  the  world. 

The  Russian  Revolution  relieved  me  from  a 
real  nightmare.  My  hatred  of  Czardom  was  so 
intense  that  in  the  beginning,  when  the, end  of  the 
war  still  appeared  as  a  purely  military  proposi- 
tion for  the  mere  establishment  of  a  new  equilib- 
rium between  the  European  powers,  I  could  not 
think  of  any  better  outcome  than  a  defeat  of  Ger- 
many in  the  West,  and  a  victory  over  Russia  in 
the  East — a  double  defeat  of  Central  and  East- 
ern European  reaction,  which  I  thought  would 
ultimately  result  in  the  downfall  of  both  Czar- 
dom and  Kaiserism.  Later  on,  as  the  deeper 
political  significance  of  the  war  issues  became 
clear,  I  had  to  take  refuge  in  a  theory  that  made 
a  virtue  of  necessity  by  considering  Czardom  as 
under  the  circmnstances  the  lesser  of  the  two 
evils.  Like  Plekhanoff  and  many  other  Russian 
sociaHsts  who  had  declared  themselves  in  favour 


THE    LAND    OF   DESPOTISM    225 

of  Russia's  war  of  national  defence,  I  believed 
that  this  war  would  achieve  the  work  of  internal 
reformation  that  had  been  begun  by  the  war  with 
Japan,  and  that  Czardom  would  not  survive  it. 
Czardom  seemed  to  me  as  incompatible  with  Rus- 
sia's war  as  Kaiserism  was  essential  to  Germany's 
war. 

For  Kaiserism  was  not  by  any  means  a  mere 
survival  from  mediaeval  times.  The  Hapsburgs, 
not  the  Hohenzollerns,  were  the  heirs  to  the  old 
German  Emperors  whose  zenith  of  real  power  is 
separated  from  the  ascent  of  the  Hohenzollerns 
to  imperial  significance  by  a  gap  of  two  centuries. 
German  Kaiserism  would  have  been  infinitely 
less  dangerous  and  less  powerful  if,  like  the 
Hapsburg  and  Romanoff  dynasties,  all  its  roots 
had  been  in  the  past.  On  the  contrary,  it  was  an 
essentially  modern  form  of  despotism.  It  de- 
rived its  strength  from  the  violence  of  class  an- 
tagonism in  a  country  of  advanced  and  rapid 
capitahst  development,  where  the  bourgeoisie  had 
been  too  busy  getting  rich  quickly  to  gather  en- 
ergy for  a  democratic  revolution,  and  therefore 
found  it  convenient  to  leave  the  political  power 
in  the  hands  of  the  classes  that  had  ruled  the 
country,  when  it  was  still  in  the  agricultural 
stage:  the  Junkers  and  the  military  caste.  The 
Kaiser  was  merely  a  figure-head.  Kaiserism 
itself  was  a  symbol  borro  ved  from  mediaeval  tra- 
dition, of  autocratic  and  militarised  capitalism. 


226     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

Czardom,  on  the  contrary,  was  nothing  but  a 
survival  of  old  semi-Asiatic  despotism,  and  as 
capitalist  industry  began  to  modernise  Russia,  it 
appeared  more  and  more  as  a  system  rotten  to 
the  core,  that  becomes  unbearable  to  all  classes. 
A  war  of  the  whole  Russian  nation,  that  necessi- 
tated a  mighty  effort  of  organisation  and  a  gal- 
vanisation of  national  energy,  was  bound  to 
smash  to  pieces  the  strait- jacket  into  which  Czar- 
dom had  clasped  a  great  people. 

This  expectation  had  come  true  at  last.  I  had 
no  longer  to  fear  I  might  be  giving  my  life  for 
the  Czar  whilst  beheving  that  it  was  for  democ- 
racy and  freedom. 

A  few  weeks  later,  about  the  middle  of  April, 
I  was  unexpectedly  ordered  away  from  the  front 
to  report  at  Ste.  Adresse,  the  seat  of  the  Belgian 
Government  in  exile.  There  I  was  asked  if  I 
would  accompany  my  friends,  Emile  Vander- 
velde,  then  a  member  of  the  Belgian  Cabinet, 
and  Louis  de  Brouckere,  on  a  journey  to  Russia. 
We  were  to  get  in  touch  with  the  Kerensky 
government  as  representatives  of  Belgian  labour. 
Aside  from  our  diplomatic  mission,  which,  of 
course,  aimed  at  the  prevention  of  a  separate 
peace  between  Russia  and  the  Central  Powers,  I 
was  to  visit  the  Russian  front  and  get  an  idea  of 
the  military  situation  f?nd  the  prospects  of  the 
planned  summer  offensive.  We  left  immedi- 
ately; stayed  a  while  in  Petrograd,  where  we  met 


THE    LAND    OF    DESPOTISM    227 

Arthur  Henderson  and  Albert  Thomas,  who 
were  there  on  a  similar  mission  for  Great  Britain 
and  France;  visited  Moscow,  Kieff  and  a  few 
other  cities,  and  the  front  from  Northern  Gahcia 
to  the  Black  Sea.  We^  returned  in  July  after 
having  paid  a  visit  to  Roumania,  at  the  request 
of  the  Bratiano  Government  and  as  guests  of  the 
King. 

From  the  thousand  impressions  of  this  event- 
ful and  tremendously  interesting  journey  I  will 
but  note  a  few  that  have  had  a  lasting  influence 
on  my  mind  and  still  retain  some  importance 
for  the  judgment  of  the  present  and  future  sit- 
uation. 

I  never  realised  the  full  importance  of  a  radi- 
cal reform  of  our  diplomatic  methods,  culminat- 
ing in  absolute  subordination  of  the  professional 
diplomats,  as  mere  technical  instruments  of  the 
democratic  governments  acting  openly  and  un- 
der the  control  of  public  opinion,  until  this  jour- 
ney allowed  me  to  peep  behind  the  scenes  of  the 
diplomatic  world.  I  am  still  amazed  at  the 
amount  of  gross  inefficiency,  childish  conceit  and 
criminal  irresponsibility  that  characterise  profes- 
sional diplomacy  and  seem  to  be  so  inherent  to 
the  system  that  not  even  the  best  men  or  the  most 
democratic  countries  escape  their  contagion.  It 
put  me  into  the  habit  of  quoting  to  myself  the 
words  of  Oxenstiema  to  his  son:  "You  do  not 
suspect,  my  son,  with  how^  little  sense  this  world 


228     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

is  being  ruled."  Sometimes  it  merely  filled  me 
with  amusement,  as  if  I  were  seeing  Abel  Her- 
mant's  novel,  "La  Carriere"  enacted — a  satire 
which  I  had  always  thought  exaggerated,  but  the 
truth  of  which  I  then  realised,  and  which  I  re- 
read later  with  intense  pleasure.  But  there  were 
other  times  when  I  thought  of  the  hell  I  had  just 
left,  and  of  Europe's  youth  being  sacrificed  by 
millions ;  and  then  I  could  have  yelled  with  rage. 
From  what  I  have  seen  of  diplomacy  in  the  very 
midst  of  this  war,  I  can  merely  say  that  there 
can  be  no  lasting  benefit  unless  this  cancer  of 
professional  and  secret  diplomacy  be  cut  out. 
In  this  respect,  also,  there  is  somewhat  of  Kaiser- 
ism  to  be  extirpated  in  every  country. 

Judging  by  what  I  saw  for  myself  on  the  spot, 
I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  we  owe  the  failure  of 
the  European  Entente  to  make  the  free  Russian 
nation  an  ally  at  least  as  faithful  and  powerful 
as  Russian  Czardom  had  been  in  the  first  place 
to  the  inefficiency  and  lack  of  understanding  of 
their  diplomacy. 

It  is  largely  due  to  the  inability  of  the  majority 
of  the  diplomats  who  had  been  accredited  to  the 
Czar  to  understand  the  meaning  of  the  revolu- 
tion and  to  adapt  themselves  in  spirit  to  the  new 
circumstances  that  such  a  false  impression  still 
prevails  in  Western  Europe  about  the  earlier 
stages  of  democratic  government  in  Russia  and 
the  prospect  it  offered  of  a  rapid,  victorious  end- 


THE    LAND    OF   DESPOTISM    229 

ing  to  the  war.  Many  people  seem  to  have  for- 
gotten altogether  that  Bolshevikism  did  not  get 
into  power  until  eight  months  after  the  downfall 
of  Czardom,  and  that  it  was  of  practically  no  ac- 
count until  the  failure  of  the  July  offensive  had 
inflicted  a  deadly  blow  on  the  Kerensky  govern- 
ment. By  confusing  the  Russian  Revolution 
with  Bolshevikism,  they  forget  that  the  treachery 
and  incapacity  of  the  Czarist  system  of  conduct- 
ing the  war  was  one  of  the  main  causes  of  that 
system's  overthrow.  They  overlook  the  fact  that 
the  original  programme  of  the  Revolution  was  a 
war  for  the  defence  of  the  newly  conquered  pop- 
ular freedom  against  the  Central  Powers,  and 
for  democratic  aims  practically  identical  with 
those  formulated  by  President  Wilson.  They 
also  overlook  the  fact  that  the  Kerensky  govern- 
ment made  a  greater  economic  and  military  effort 
to  carry  this  war  to  a  successful  conclusion  than 
the  Czar  had  ever  attempted.  And  I  for  one  am 
convinced  that  with  a  little  more  understanding 
and  support  on  the  part  of  the  Entente,  this 
effort  would  have  succeeded,  struck  German  mili- 
tarism a  death-blow  and  spared  Russia  the  ordeal 
of  anarchy  and  Bolshevikism. 

Few  men  in  history  have  been  so  misjudged 
as  Kerensky.  I  consider  the  popular  belief  that 
he  lacked  energy  as  the  exact  opposite  of  the 
truth.  The  very  fact  that  this  man  was  suffer- 
ing from  tuberculosis  to  the  extent  that  he  had 


230     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

had  a  kidney  removed  and  had  practically  lost 
the  use  of  an  arm — that  this  man,  to  whom  after 
he  had  assmned  power  the  doctors  had  given  only 
a  few  weeks  more  to  live,  was  yet  able  to  carry 
on  a  gigantic  day-and-night  task  for  months  by 
sheer  nervous  strength,  is  already  a  strong  pre- 
sumption to  the  contrary,  I  have  been  witness 
.to  Kerensky's  almost  superhuman  efforts;  his 
ubiquity  and  sleepless  activity  made  one  think  of 
Napoleon  at  the  height  of  his  working  capacity. 
I  can  still  see  him  sitting  at  meetings,  which 
started  after  midnight  and  lasted  until  the  morn- 
ing hours,  with  a  deathly  pallor  on  his  face,  clos- 
ing his  reddened  eyes  for  a  few  seconds'  torpor 
whenever  he  was  not  directly  concerned  in  the 
discussion,  but  wide  awake  the  next  minute  to 
take  part  in  it  again.  Indeed,  his  will-power 
was  the  only  secret  of  his  popularity.  I  would 
not  call  him  extraordinarily  intelligent;  there 
were  other  members  of  his  government,  Tsere- 
telli,  for  instance,  whose  brain  power  was  prob- 
ably much  superior  to  his.  Nor  could  his  elo- 
quence account  for  his  power  over  the  masses. 
He  had  none  of  that  artistic  versatility  of  elocu- 
tion that  appeals  so  much  to  the  Russian  mind. 
His  voice  was  strong,  but  somewhat  hoarse  and 
guttural,  and  he  spoke  in  short,  matter-of-fact, 
energetic  sentences,  in  a  manner  more  soldierlike 
than  sentimental.  The  remarkable  way  in  which 
he  nevertheless  electrified  the  masses  whenever 


THE    LAND    OF   DESPOTISM    231 

he  appeared — even  when  he  only  expressed  him- 
self through  his  deportment  or  his  gestures — can 
only  be  explained  by  the  fascination  of  his  will- 
power. This  is  an  exceptional  thing  to  find  in 
Russia,  where  constructive  and  consistent  energy 
is  a  rare  attribute  amongst  men,  and  where  the 
crowds  are  as  receptive  to  the  influence  of  a  mani- 
fest strong  will  as  some  weak  women  are  to  virile 
energy. 

It  is  true  that  this  will  might  have  been  ill- 
directed  or  weakened  in  its  effect  by  intellectual 
hesitation  or  sentimentaUty.  Yet,  I  do  not  be- 
lieve that  even  this  was  the  case.  Kerensky 
seemed  to  me  to  pursue  with  remarkable  consist- 
ency and  ruthlessness  from  the  beginning  until 
the  very  end  a  quite  definite  aim,  to  win  for  his 
government  the  support  of  all  classes  in  Russia, 
from  the  peasants  to  the  capitalists,  that  had  a 
common  interest  in  seeing  a  republican  form  of 
national  self-government  established  and  consol- 
idated. The  means  by  which  he  meant  to  reach 
this  end  were  obvious  enough.  They  were  the 
same  as  those  of  the  young  American  republic 
after  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  of  the 
French  Convention  on  the  eve  of  the  first  in- 
vasion :  a  holy  war  for  the  defense  of  democracy 
against  an  enemy  despot. 

The  difficulties  inherent  in  the  general  condi- 
tion of  Russia  were,  it  is  true,  enormous.  The 
very  disorganisation  of  the  country,  which  had 


232     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

caused  the  downfall  of  the  ancien  regime  that 
was  responsible  for  it,  put  an  extremely  heavy- 
task  on  the  shoulders  of  the  popular  power  that 
had  taken  its  place.  Certain  aspects  of  the  prob- 
lem of  national  reorganisation  even  seemed  to  be 
altogether  incapable  of  solution  within  the  short 
period  of  time  required  by  the  circumstances.  Of 
such,  was  the  insufficiency  of  the  railroad  system, 
and  means  of  transportation  generally  for  the 
continued  maintenance  of  two  million  soldiers, 
along  a  stabilised  front  from  the  Baltic  to  the 
Black  Sea.  But  this  was  all  the  more  reason,  as 
Kerensky  realised  perfectly  well,  to  aim  at  a 
quick  military  decision. 

There  was  another  reason,  which  was  the  state 
of  mind  of  the  soldiers  themselves.  The  imme- 
diate effect  of  the  revolution  had  been  a  sudden 
loosening  of  the  traditional  ultra-Prussianised 
discipline  and  the  spreading  of  the  illusion  that 
an  international  revolution  was  bound  to  follow 
and  put  a  prompt  end  to  the  war,  so  that  the 
soldiers  might  go  home  to  their  villages  and  take 
their  part  of  the  land. 

Kerensky  has  been  accused  of  encouraging  mil- 
itary insubordination  by  his  lenient  attitude  and 
by  accepting  the  famous  Prikase  No.  1  of  the 
Soviet  governtnent,  that  established  the  Soviet 
system  as  a  regular  part  of  military  organisation. 
I  am  convinced,  however,  that  he  chose  the  only 
way  that  could  lead  to  the  reestablishment  of  dis- 


THE    LAND    OF   DESPOTISM    233 

cipline  on  democratic  principles.  He  was  as 
strict  a  disciplinarian  as  any  general  of  the  old 
regime,  but  he  was  wise  enough  to  realise  that 
persuasion  and  propaganda  would  do  more  than 
cruel  repression  to  stop  mass  desertion  and  fra- 
ternisation with  the  enemy.  He  knew,  more- 
over, how  to  be  severe  when  severity  was  re- 
quired. As  to  the  Sovietising  of  the  army,  it 
undoubtedly  led  in  the  beginning  to  some  very 
disagreeable  consequences;  but  the  native  com- 
mon sense  of  the  Russian  soldiers  soon  restored 
the  activity  of  the  military  Soviets  to  normal 
limits,  within  which  they  performed  very  useful 
functions  as  organs  of  democratic  control  over 
the  interior  administration  of  military  units  and 
of  propaganda  amongst  the  soldiers.  Even  the 
suppression  when  off  duty  of  compulsory  salut- 
ing, which  has  been  the  object  of  quite  extreme 
criticism,  had  no  bad  effect  on  discipline. 

It  is  thanks  to  this  wise  policy  that  Kerensky, 
after  less  than  three  months  devoted  to  tireless 
propaganda,  had  succeeded  in  making  the  war 
popular  with  a  great  majority  of  the  Russian 
people  and  in  creating  psychological  and  mili- 
tary conditions  more  favourable  to  a  large  scale 
offensive  than  any  that  existed  before. 

He  realised  the  truth  of  G.  B.  Shaw's  dictum: 
"If  the  Russian  Revolution  is  to  be  saved  from 
reaction  and  the  Russian  Republic  from  disrup- 
tion by  the  discontent  of  the  working  class  and 


234     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

the  diversity  of  the  ideals  of  its  own  reformers, 
the  revolutionary  Government  must  fortify  itself 
by  a  war,  precisely  as  the  French  revolutionary 
government  had  to  do.  If  there  were  no  war, 
it  would  have  to  make  one." 

For  all  that,  not  much  less  than  a  miracle  was 
required  to  make  Russia  victorious.  But  then 
this  is  the  sort  of  miracle  that  is  often  brought 
about  by  revolutions,  which  by  sheer  force  of 
popular  enthusiasm  magnify  beyond  all  normal 
measure  the  power  of  a  nation.  After  all,  the 
situation  of  Russia  in  June,  1917,  was  much  less 
hopeless  than  that  of  France  seemed  to  be  in 
1792.  Kerensky  knew  this  and  believed  the  mir- 
acle would  happen. 

He  did  not  rely  on  popular  enthusiasm  alone. 
I  have  satisfied  myself  of  the  truth  of  his  asser- 
tion, corroborated  by  the  Commander-in-Chief 
Alexeieff  and  his  successor  Brussiloff,  that  never 
before  had  the  Russian  army  disposed  of  such 
reserves  of  men  at  the  front,  of  such  satisfactory 
supphes,  and  of  such  an  amount  of  artillery  and 
ammunition.  I  took  some  trouble  to  survey  the 
situation  on  the  spot,  not  only  by  heart-to-heart 
talks  with  the  general  staff  of  the  armies  and 
army  corps  that  were  to  take  part  in  the  July 
offensive,  and  by  visits  to  the  trenches,  but  also 
by  flying  over  the  whole  front  of  the  offenjsive, 
with  a  Russian  pilot,  at  an  altitude  (less  than 
3000  feet)  that  allowed  me  to  form  a  quite  defi- 


THE    LAND    OF   DESPOTISM    235 

nite  idea  of  the  Russian,  German,  Austrian,  and 
Turkish  positions.  My  conclusion  was  that  the 
odds,  tactically  speaking,  were  in  favour  of  the 
success  of  the  Russian  offensive.  The  numeri- 
cal strength  of  the  Russian  armies  at  the  front 
was  at  least  twice  that  of  their  opponents.  The 
Russian  field  artillery  was  notably  superior,  with 
a  reserve  of  about  20  million  rounds,  resulting 
from  the  long  previous  spell  of  inactivity ;  heavy 
artillery  and  trench  mortars  were  about  bal- 
anced. 

As  to  the  morale  and  fighting  determination  of 
the  troops  in  the  sectors  of  the  offensive,  it  was 
better  than  ever  before  the  revolution,  according 
even  to  observers  who  were  anything  but  prone 
to  view  the  revolutionary  changes  in  the  army 
wJth  sympathy.  Besides,  the  Austrians,  who 
formed  the  bulk  of  the  forces  that  were  to  bear 
the  brunt  of  the  attack,  were  hardly  any  better 
off  than  the  Russians  from  the  viewpoint  of  gen- 
eral organisation  and  morale.  I  also  beUeve  that 
if  the  offensive  in  Galicia,  Bukowina  and  Rou- 
mania  had  succeeded,  it  would,  in  view  of  the 
lack  of  enemy  reserves  behind  the  Eastern  front 
and  the  precarious  position  of  the  Germans  and 
Austrians  in  the  West,  have  had  consequences 
reaching  far  beyond  the  significance  of  a  local 
withdrawal. 

Why  then  did  it  fail,  and  after  some  local  suc- 
cesses and  the  swift  forward  sweep  of  Korniloff 's 


236     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

army  in  the  centre  suddenly  result  in  a  rout  and 
panic,  with  German  companies  chasing  fleeing 
Russian  divisions  before  them  over  scores  of 
miles  ? 

A  glance  at  the  order  of  battle  on  the  map  of 
operations  clearly  tells  the  cause.  Whilst  the 
armies  that  launched  the  attack,  after  having 
been  morally  prepared  by  Kerensky's  propa- 
ganda, fought  heroically  for  ten  days  with  a 
success  varying  according  to  the  amount  of 
resistance  encountered ;  a  weak  German  counter- 
offensive  against  the  forces  on  the  wings  that 
remained  passive  put  the  latter  to  flight  without 
fighting.  Thus  the  Germans  had  staked  their 
all  in  running  the  risk  of  having  their  feeble 
counter-attacking  force  annihilated  whilst  en- 
deavouring to  take  advantage  of  the  weakness 
inherent  to  the  precarious  Russian  undertaking. 
For  Kerensky's  policy  had  been,  in  view  of  the 
short  time  allowed  for  a  gigantic  work  of  moral 
preparation,  to  concentrate  all  his  efforts  on  those 
armies  that  were  going  to  attack.  He  relied  on 
their  success  to  carry  with  them  the  others 
(amongst  whom  the  Bolshevik  defeatist  propa- 
ganda had  gone  on  unchecked)  by  sheer  force  of 
example  and  the  prestige  of  victory.  The  psy- 
chology of  the  Russian  crowd  is,  like  that  of 
all  ignorant  masses,  essentially  impulsive  and 
changeable.  The  psychological  equilibrium  was 
as  unstable  with  the  attacking  armies,  where 


THE    LAND    OF   DESPOTISM    237 

a  high  pitch  of  warhke  enthusiasm  had  been 
reached  after  a  few  weeks  of  intense  propaganda, 
as  with  the  armies  on  the  wings,  where  prolonged 
inactivity  and  forced  neglect  had  created  a  fa- 
vourable recruiting  ground  for  Bolshevikism. 
Once  the  latter  yielded  to  the  pressure  of  incom- 
parably weaker  but  reckless  enemy  forces,  those 
of  the  former  who  had  paid  the  dearest  price  for 
their  advance  were  seized  by  the  contagion  of 
panic,  and  the  ordered  strategic  withdrawal  of 
the  others  soon  also  degenerated  into  a  rout. 
The  very  conditions  that  were  to  make  victory 
avalanche-hke  gave  an  avalanche  impetus  to 
defeat. 

From  then  on,  Kerensky  was  doomed,  and 
Bolshevikism,  the  only  force  that  promised  bread 
and  peace  to  a  nation  exhausted  by  a  disastrous 
war,  the  international  issues  of  which  it  could  not 
understand,  was  bound  to  get  into  power.  Most 
of  Kerensky's  critics  base  their  charges  of  weak- 
ness and  inconsistency  on  his  attitude  between  the 
July  disaster  and  the  Bolshevik  revolution  in 
November,  and  especially  on  his  final  refusal  to 
collaborate  with  Korniloff  and  Savinkoff  to  es- 
tablish a  military  dictatorship.  I  think,  on  the 
contrary,  that  Kerensky  put  up  as  gallant  a 
fight  as  he  could  against  overwhelmingly  adverse 
circumstances  and  that  it  does  his  political  hon- 
esty credit  not  to  have  yielded  to  the  temptation 
to   reestablish   by  mihtary   violence   a  waning 


238     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

power  that  had  ceased  to  have  the  support  of  the 
majority  of  the  people. 

I  remain  unshakably  convinced,  from  my 
knowledge  of  the  objective  conditions  of  the  July 
offensive,  that  events  at  that  time  might  have 
taken  an  opposite  turn  if  a  little  more  pro-war 
propaganda  had  then  been  made  to  check  the  in- 
fluence of  Bolshevikism  at  its  beginning.  This 
would  have  been  possible  if  Kerensky  had  been 
better  supported  by  his  Western  alKes  in  his  en- 
deavour to  preach  a  holy  war  for  democracy  and 
freedom.  But,  thanks  largely  to  the  stupidity 
of  diplomacy  and  the  inadequacy  of  press  in- 
formation, he  was  met  with  mistrust.  The  pub- 
lication of  the  secret  treaties  and  a  frank  common 
statement  of  democratic,  non-imperialistic  war 
aims  by  the  Entente  Powers  would  have  put 
Kerensky  in  a  position  to  crush  Bolshevikism 
more  effectively  than  any  terrorist  dictatorship 
could  have  done.  But  the  Russian  Government 
tried  in  vain  to  get  this  collaboration. 

At  a  particularly  critical  juncture,  when  it  was 
urgently  necessary  to  oppose  the  plan  of  the 
Stockholm  international  conference  that  could 
only  result  in  a  negotiated  German  peace,  and 
which  was  used  by  the  Bolshevik  propagandists 
at  the  Russian  front  as  an  argument  to  prove 
the  uselessness  of  an  offensive,  Lloyd  George 
suddenly  changed  his  attitude  and  by  under- 
hand methods  encouraged  this  unfortunate  pro- 


THE    LAND    OF   DESPOTISM    239 

posal.  Arthur  Henderson  was  to  act  as  an  in- 
strument in  this  intrigue.  He  was  loyal  enough 
to  leave  the  War  Cabinet  later  on,  on  account 
of  his  advocacy  of  the  Stockholm  Conference, 
without  saying  that  Lloyd  George  himself  had 
instructed  him  in  June,  1917,  when  he  acted 
as  a  temporary  British  ambassador  in  Petro- 
grad,  to  favor  this  conference.  He  did  not 
make  the  facts  of  the  case  pubhc  until  after 
the  war  was  over.  This  is  one  of  the  darkest 
periods  in  the  history  of  European  secret  diplo- 
macy, for  whilst  there  was  a  magnificent  chance 
to  make  democratic  Russia  a  decisive  asset  in  a 
final  onslaught  on  the  Central  Powers,  it  was 
spoilt  by  the  lack  of  diplomatic  and  military  co- 
ordination. 

The  intrigues  of  Entente  statesmen  were 
largely  responsible  for  this.  Their  want  of 
confidence  in  universal  democracy  induced  them 
secretly  to  favour  a  peace  by  negotiation  whilst 
openly  talking  of  crushing  the  foe.  Europe  has 
paid  dearly  for  their  mistake:  they  would  not 
trust  Russian  democracy ;  they  were  faced  instead 
with  Russian  anarchy. 

During  that  period  full  of  magnificent  hope 
and  enthusiasm  that  made  one  think  of  the  young 
French  nation  before  Valmy,  Bolshevikism  was 
of  very  little  account.  It  was  confined  to  a  small 
but  energetic  group,  mostly  composed  of  politi- 
cal exiles  recently   returned   from   Siberia   or 


240    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

Western  Europe,  whose  influence  over  a  section 
of  the  working  classes  in  the  great  cities  and  of 
the  soldiers  was,  characteristically  enough,  on  the 
dechne  during  the  few  weeks  that  preceded  the 
July  offensive.  The  chances  that  they  would 
ever  get  into  power  seemed  at  that  time  ridic- 
ulously small.  What  struck  me  most  was  the 
fundamental  difference,  nay,  the  contrast  be- 
tween the  frame  of  mind  of  their  leaders  and  that 
of  the  mass  of  the  Russian  people. 

The  Russian  crowds  with  whom  I  came  into 
contact — together  with  Vandervelde  and  de 
Brouckere,  I  have  talked  to  a  total  of  about 
96,000  people  at  38  pubhc  meetings,  both  at  the 
front  and  in  the  rear — struck  me  as  being  of  a 
charming  disposition.  Unless  my  impression 
was  very  much  mistaken,  the  average  Russian, 
and  especially  the  peasant,  seemed  to  be  a  sweet- 
tempered  individual,  unenergetic,  contemplative 
and  sentimental,  but  with  a  solid  foundation  of 
plain,  almost  childish  enthusiasm.  Withal  a  very 
unmilitary  race,  to  whom  the  idea  of  killing  is  as 
adverse  as  that  of  being  killed.  With  the  excep- 
tion of  a  few  nomad  warrior  tribes,  it  required 
the  foreign  influence  of  an  imported  mihtary  dis- 
cipline to  turn  such  material  into  soldiers. 

What  struck  me,  above  all,  was  their  tolerance 
and  their  sheeplike  indifference  to  everything  that 
did  not  concern  them  immediately  and  personally 
— apart  from  some  sudden  waves  of  temporary 


THE    LAND    OF   DESPOTISM   241 

mystic  enthusiasm.  I  have  seen  meetings  ter- 
minate in  a  spirit  of  charming  mutual  courtesy 
that  with  one-tenth  of  the  explosive  power  latent 
therein  would  in  any  other  country  have  resulted 
in  most  abominable  disorder.  In  short,  the  life 
in  peasant  communities  which  has  given  the  na- 
tional psychology  its  peculiar  stamp  seems  to 
have  developed,  in  spite  of  the  lack  of  national 
self-government,  a  very  strong  instinct  of  soli- 
darity, mutual  tolerance,  and,  as  they  say  them- 
selves, "all-human"  sympathy.  After  I  had 
seen  Russia,  I  could  understand  the  peculiar  na- 
tional quality  of  Prince  Kropotkine's  utopia  of 
a  free  discipline  based  on  mutual  help  without 
authority,  and  I  also  understood  how  this  advo- 
cate of  arcadian  anarchism  had  been  turned  by 
the  war  into  an  energetic  patriot. 

The  yeast  that  was  to  make  this  dough  rise  was 
of  quite  a  different  quality.  They  were  intel- 
lectuals and  semi-intellectuals,  most  of  them 
Jews,  Letts,  Georgians,  and  other  members  of 
oppressed  nationalities,  who  had  been  imprisoned 
or  exiled  from  their  native  country  in  their  youth. 
The  majority  of  them  had  lived  in  other  Euro- 
pean countries,  where  they  had  formed  small  mi- 
gratory colonies  that  refused  to  assimilate,  or 
even  to  come  into  contact,  with  the  national  life 
of  those  countries.  They  were  all  socialists,  of 
course,  but  their  socialist  activity  was  purely 
academic  and  literary.     Unable  as  they  were  to 


242     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

do  anything  in  the  labour  movement  either  of 
their  native  country  or  of  their  land  of  adoption, 
they  had  to  confine  themselves  to  theorising. 
Their  main  activity  consisted  in  meeting  from 
night  till  morning  in  small  groups  around  a 
friendly  samovar,  in  smoking  an  endless  number 
of  cigarettes,  and  in  vehement  discussion  of  ab- 
stract theories.  All  of  which  was  to  start  again 
the  next  evening,  with  a  fresh  supply  of  tea,  of 
cigarettes,  and — at  somewhat  larger  intervals — 
of  up-to-date  doctrines.  No  wonder  that  their 
temper  became  bitter  and  intolerant.  They  were 
pickled  in  the  vinegar  of  exile.  The  result  was 
that  Russian  socialism  appeared  as  a  kaleido- 
scope of  an  endless  number  of  so-called  parties, 
factions,  fractions  of  factions,  sects,  tendencies, 
and  sub-tendencies,  all  equally  eager  to  claim  the 
monopoly  of  having  discovered  the  only  adequate 
method  of  pseudo-Marxian  hair-splitting  that 
could  save  the  proletariat. 

When  the  revolution  gave  these  unhappy  vic- 
tims of  Czarist  oppression  an  opportunity  to  re- 
turn to  their  native  land,  which  many  of  them, 
like  Lenine,  had  not  seen  since  they  were  less 
than  twenty,  they  had  developed  peculiarities  of 
mind  that  made  them  the  exact  psychological  op- 
posite of  the  masses  of  whom  they  were  to  assume 
the  lead. 

There  is  no  better  proof,  by  the  way,  of  the 
pathetic    inability    of   any    system   of   govern- 


THE    LAND    OF   DESPOTISM    243 

ment  other  than  democracy  to  develop  the  intel- 
lectual and  administrative  capacities  of  mind  re- 
quired by  progressive  leadership.  On  the  other 
hand,  any  undemocratic  policy  that  tries  to  keep 
the  labour  movement  and  intellectual  progress 
out  of  their  natural  channels  of  experimental  ac- 
tion is  bound  to  result  in  Bolshevikism,  viz.,  in 
despotism  from  below  as  the  answer  to  despotism 
from  above. 

This  state  of  things  helped  me  to  understand 
the  doctrinal  aspect  of  Bolshevikism.  Practi- 
cally, it  was  nothing  but  the  response  of  the 
hungry  war-weary  masses  to  the  call  for  support 
of  the  only  people  who  could  at  least  promise 
them  a  w^y  out  of  their  misery.  Theoretically, 
it  was  an  attempt  to  adapt  artificially  to  Russian 
conditions,  aggravated  by  military  and  economic 
disorganisation,  an  abstract  doctrine  conceived  in 
exile  and  distilled  from  social  conceptions  corre- 
sponding to  a  stage  of  economic  and  pohtical 
development  existing  abroad  but  as  different 
from  that  of  Russia  as  is  a  hydraulic-press  from 
a  sledge  hammer  in  a  village  smithy. 

The  Bolsheviks  made  a  virtue  of  necessity  and 
called  their  unorganised  mob-rule,,  helped  by  dis- 
banded soldiers  with  their  machine-guns,  the  dic- 
tatorship of  the  proletariat.  This  dogma  they 
had  borrowed  from  the  arsenal  of  the  German 
Social-Democrats,  to  whom  the  very  spirit  of  de- 
mocracy was  so  foreign  that  they  could  not  con- 


244     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

ceive  the  emancipation  of  labour  except  as  a  kind 
of  military  victory  of  one  class  over  another,  re- 
placing the  despotism  of  capital  by  the  despotism 
of  labour.  In  a  sense  this  really  corresponded 
to  the  situation  in  Germany,  where  indeed  the 
high  tension  of  class  antagonism,  resulting  ftom 
the  swift  development  of  capitalism,  combined 
with  the  permeation  of  all  institutions  with  the 
spirit  of  mihtarism,  and  the  lack  of  political  free- 
dom, made  a  proletarian  dictatorship  a  proba- 
bility. 

In  Russia,  however,  this  term  became  a 
mockery.  The  industrial  proletariat,  that  in 
Germany,  England  or  Belgium  means  the  ma- 
jority of  the  nation,  in  Russia  never  formed  more 
than  five  per  cent  of  the  population.  During 
the  war,  it  hardly  existed  at  all,  for  the  majority 
of  the  workers  of  the  big  factories  and  mines 
were  in  the  army — mostly  with  the  artillery  and 
the  engineers — and  had  been  replaced  by  a  mot- 
ley crowd  mostly  of  young  peasants  and  peasant 
girls  fresh  from  the  country,  and  by  casual  work- 
ers. The  Soviet  movement  that  was  to  be  the 
instrument  of  the  proletarian  dictatorship  had  so 
little  to  do  with  normal  industrial  democracy  that 
it  totally  ignored  the  labour  unions,  which  had 
reached  a  certain  significance  since  1905. 

I  have  made  some  Russian  socialists  entertain 
mild  doubts  about  my  sanity  of  mind  by  telling 
them  that  I  thought  they  ought  to  replace  their 


THE    LAND    OF   DESPOTISM    245 

cry  of  "Down  with  capitalism!"  by  "Hurrah  for 
capitalism  1"  There  was  nothing  more  pathetic 
than  to  see  a  Petrograd  crowd  of  unemployed 
workers,  still  half-dressed  as  peasants,  and  of  de- 
serters from  the  army,  walking  through  the  filthy 
streets,  past  the  idle  factories  and  the  empty 
shops,  with  the  ominous  "Down  with  capitalism" 
on  their  banners.  If  their  leaders  had  learned 
anything  from  Western  Europe,  they  ought  to 
have  realised  that  capitalism  is  a  necessary  stage 
of  industrial  development,  without  which  human 
productivity  could  not  have  reached  the  level 
that  can  alone  make  possible  any  improvement  of 
the  workers'  standard  of  living,  to  say  nothing  of 
their  emancipation  as  a  class.  The  Bolsheviks 
reminded  me  of  the  man  up  a  tree,  busily  en- 
gaged in  sawing  off  the  branch  that  supports 
him. 

The  failure  of  Russian  Bolshevikism  to  achieve 
anything  but  disorganisation  and  demoralisation 
again  convinced  me  of  the  truth  which  the  col- 
lapse of  German  social-democracy  had  already 
taught,  namely,  that  no  sound  labour  movement, 
no  sociahsm  is  possible  without  a  minimum  of 
pohtical  democracy  —  that  minimum  for  the 
maintenance  of  which  we  were  fighting.  No  so- 
cialist state  would  be  worth  living  in  unless  im- 
bued with  the  spirit  of  political  freedom,  demo- 
cratic government  and  efficient  administration 
that  cannot  arise  unless  this  minimum  be  at- 


246     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

tained.  A  nation  that  has  never  enjoyed  free- 
dom cannot  understand  how  much  it  means  to 
those  who  have  it,  and  who  have  it  because  they 
have  conquered  it  themselves. 


X 


IN   THE  LAND   OF   FREEDOM 

Have  the  elder  races  halted? 
Do  they  droop  and  end  their  lesson,  wearied  over  there  beyond 

the   seas? 
We  take  up  the  task  eternal,  and  the  burden,  and  the  lesson, 
Pioneers! — O  Pioneers! 

Walt  Whitman,  Pioneers!  0  Pioneers! 

What  the  lesson  of  Germany  and  Russia  had 
begun  to  bring  home  to  me  in  a  negative  way, 
my  visit  to  the  United  States  in  1918  succeeded 
in  teaching  me  positively. 

After  another  spell  at  the  front,  the  Belgian 
Government  sent  me  abroad  again,  in  April, 
1918.  This  time  I  was  to  go  to  the  United 
States  as  labour  expert  with  a  mission  that  was  to 
study,  with  a  view  to  the  reconstruction  of  Bel- 
gium after  the  war,  the  American  methods  of 
labour  management  in  industry.  After  this  mis- 
sion was  completed,  I  stayed  another  few  weeks 
to  do  some  experimental  work  for  the  American 
army,  under  orders  from  the  Director  of  Bel- 
gian trench  artillery.  My  six  months'  stay  gave 
me  a  unique  opportunity  of  getting  into  touch 
with  all  classes  of  people,  in  36  different  States ; 
and,  needless  to  say,  I  learned  more  things — or 

247 


248     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

at  least,  I  imagine  I  did — than  are  directly 
concerned  with  scientific  shop -management  or 
trench-mortar  experiments. 

I  came  to  America  with  great  expectations, 
combined  with  a  certain  uneasiness  lest  they 
should  be  disappointed. 

I  knew  no  more  about  the  United  States  than 
what  I  had  learned  out  of  books  in  my  study  of 
history  and  literature.  I  felt  a  great  curosity  to 
verify  what  Viscount  Bryce  and  De  Tocqueville 
had  written  in  their  studies  on  American  democ- 
racy, and  to  find  out  whether  there  was  anything 
left  of  the  spirit  that  had  animated  Whitman's 
"Leaves  of  Grass." 

I  will  confess  also,  although  it  may  seem 
puerile  enough,  I  was  greatly  looking  forward 
to  seeing  the  land  and  the  people  immortalised 
by — Mark  Twain.  When  I  first  saw  the  Missis- 
sippi, which  still  seemed  to  me  haunted  by  the 
ghosts  of  Huck  Finn  and  Tom  Sawyer  (those 
heroes  of  my  boyhood!),  it  gave  me  a  thrill  of 
emotion  almost  as  intense  as  when  I  took  off  my 
hat  to  the  Statue  of  Liberty  on  entering  New 
York  harbour.  I  am  sure  this  will  sound  very 
irreverent  to  those  Americans  who,  unhke  myself 
and  many  Europeans,  consider  Mark  Twain  as 
an  entertainer  and  nothing  more.  Perhaps  one 
must  be  a  foreigner  to  feel  the  pulse  of  America 
beating  through  that  humorous  philosophy  of  his. 

Above   all,  to  turn  to  weightier  matter,   I 


IN    THE    LAND    OF    FREEDOM    249 

wanted  to  make  sure  whether  President  Wilson 
was  voicing  the  personal  desires  of  a  dreamer  or 
the  conscious  will  of  his  nation. 

It  is  in  this  last  respect  that  my  expectations 
were  subject  to  some  uneasiness.  My  mind  was 
still  somewhat  prejudiced  by  what  I  had  learnt 
on  the  subject  of  America  from  the  literature  of 
German  social-democracy  and  of  the  American 
Socialist  Party.  They  taught  us  that  American 
democracy  was  a  mere  bhnd  to  the  most  ruthless 
form  of  capitaUst  exploitation  of  the  workers,  a 
bhnd  of  the  "dollar-kings"  to  justify  this  exploi- 
tation by  the  figment,  achieved  through  dema- 
gogy and  corruption,  of  its  victim's  consent. 

I  had  plenty  of  good  reasons  not  to  beheve  all 
this.  The  main  one  was  that  America  had  obvi- 
ously entered  the  war  under  the  influence  of 
causes  of  a  higher  order  than  the  interests  of  her 
capitahsts.  Her  President,  elected  by  popular 
vote,  had  advocated  war-aims  inspired  by  a  much 
broader  vision  of  the  happiness  of  mankind  and 
by  a  much  truer  love  of  democracy  than  those  of 
any  European  statesman.  Yet  there  remained 
these  anxious  questions:  Did  President  Wilson's 
ideals  really  correspond  to  the  spirit  pervading 
the  American  people?  Was  there  not  the  same 
difference  as  in  European  countries  between  the 
disinterested  war-motives  proclaimed  openly  and 
the  secret,  sordid  ambitions  of  influential  minori- 
ties behind  the  scenes? 


250    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

I  hasten  to  say  that  my  anxiety  was  thoroughly 
dispelled  by  what  I  saw  on  the  spot,  and  that 
America  has  strengthened  my  belief  in  the  value 
of  democracy  more  than  anything  else  could  have 
done.  I  fell  in  love  with  her,  and  this  love  is  all 
the  stronger  for  not  being  blind  to  certain  flaws 
and  imperfections. 

My  greatest  surprise  was  to  find  that  America 
was  not  the  community  of  dollar-worshippers 
that  many  European  critics  would  make  us  be- 
lieve. On  the  contrary,  my  decided  impression 
was  that  in  no  other  country  does  mere  material 
wealth  carry  with  it  less  prestige,  in  no  other 
country  is  it  less  considered  as  being  the  one  aim 
in  life.  One  finds  there,  of  com*se,  the  intense 
struggle  for  life  inherent  to  the  progressive 
movement  of  a  highly  industrialised  and  capital- 
ist method  of  production,  which  invariably  makes 
money  the  standard  of  success.  But  so  it  is  in 
all  European  countries.  In  America,  however, 
money-making  is,  as  a  rule,  considered  as  a  means 
to  an  end,  and  not,  like  in  most  old  countries,  as 
an  end  in  itself.  The  very  word  rentier — ^the 
retired  man  of  business  who  starts  as  early  as 
possible  to  live  on  his  generally  very  moderate 
savings  in  idleness  and  mediocrity — ^is  unknown 
in  the  American  vocabulary.  There  are  loafers, 
sure  enough,  but  they  don't  advertise  it,  and  their 
ideal  is  not  popular,  as  it  is  in  France  or  Belgium, 
where  the  universal  desire  to  become  a  petty 


IN   THE    LAND    OF   FREEDOM    251 

rentier  is  a  real  curse  to  economic  progress. 
Rich  people  in  America  mostly  work  hard  (too 
hard,  even)  and  quite  a  few  of  them  are  as  busy- 
in  spending  money  for  purposes  other  than  their 
own  as  in  earning  it.  The  best  thing  for  a  rich 
American  to  do  if  he  wants  to  stop  working  and 
spend  his  fortune  in  idleness,  is  to  go  to  Europe. 
He  will  not  be  out  of  place  there,  whilst  if  he 
stays  in  America  he  will  be  pointed  at  by  his  own 
people. 

The  very  prodigality  with  which  most  Ameri- 
cans spend  their  money,  as  compared  with  the 
financial  conservatism  of  thrift-ridden  Europe, 
is  evidence  that  they  attach  less  importance  to  its 
mere  possession.  Again,  the  dowry  system,  that 
makes  marriage  amongst  the  wealthy  classes  of 
continental  Europe  almost  synonymous  with 
legalised  prostitution,-  is  unknown  in  the  States 
and  would  doubtless  be  considered  as  a  gross  in- 
sult to  the  dignity  of  both  men  and  women. 

Even  making  a  liberal  allowance  for  the  tem- 
porary effect  of  war  enthusiasm,  the  way  in 
which  America  fostered  the  spirit  of  sacrifice  to 
the  needs  of  the  community  seemed  to  me  to 
demonstrate  a  higher  level  of  public  morality  and 
social  conscience  than  anything  to  be  found  on 
the  European  continent.  I  except  England, 
where  the  pubhc  spirit  much  more  resembles  that 
of  America.  I  will  merely  compare  the  attitude 
of  the  upper  and  middle-class  Americans  with 


252    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

that  of  the  similar  classes  in  France  and  Belgium, 
who  I  had  ample  opportunity  of  observing  dur- 
ing the  war.  There  is  no  need  for  me  to  em- 
phasise here  how  incomparably  larger  was  the 
total  amount  of  human  lives  and  of  material 
wealth  destroyed  by  the  war  in  these  countries 
than  it  was  in  America.  Yet  the  general  atti- 
tude of  the  wealthy  and  comfortable  European 
classes  was  a  stubborn  resistance  to  any  lowering 
of  their  standard  of  living,  even  though  justified 
by  the  common  interest  of  the  nation.  The  re- 
strictions on  food  and  fuel  consumption  imposed 
by  law  were  commonly  considered  as  an  annoy- 
ance that  it  was  fair  to  evade  whenever  an  oppor- 
tunity oflfered.  In  America,  on  the  contrary, 
voluntary  restriction  was  so  generally  accepted 
as  a  moral  duty  that  in  many  cases  it  was  carried 
to  excess. 

Since  my  return  to  Belgium,  I  have  met 
many  honourable  well-to-do  people,  who  lost 
their  sons  and  part  of  their  property  through  the 
war,  and  who  bravely  faced  imprisonment,  de- 
portation or  even  execution  for  defying  the  Ger- 
mans during  the  occupation.  But  these  same 
people  had  spent  practically  all  the  money  they 
had  managed  to  save  in  buying  food-luxuries  at 
exorbitant  prices,  rather  than  change  their  habits 
of  eating  and  drinking  well  and  plentifully. 
They  paid  five  dollars  for  a  pound  of  butter, 
thirty  dollars  for  a  cwt.  of  potatoes,  and  twenty- 


IN    THE    LAND    OF    FREEDOM    253 

five  cents  for  an  egg  or  a  quart  of  milk,  without 
ever  thinking  that  their  action  cruelly  deprived 
the  poorer  classes  of  their  chance  of  getting 
things  which  were  to  them  not  a  luxury  but  a 
.necessity.  I  told  these  epicureans  about  my 
American  friends  who  had  voluntarily  sacri- 
ficed luxuries  they  might  easily  have  paid  for 
if  they  had  wanted  to;  about  the  popular  re- 
sponse to  such  appeals  as  were  made  for  the 
"gasoleneless  Sundays"  and  for  the  financial 
support  of  the  Red  Cross  and  Soldiers'  Welfare 
institutions.  They  thought  I  was  telling  them 
fairy  tales.  They  certainly  did  not  understand 
that  the  more  purely  democratic  character  of 
American  institutions  had  resulted  in  a  much 
acuter  consciousness  of  national,  nay  even  of 
human,  sohdarity,  and  in  an  altogether  higher 
standard  of  public  morahty. 

My  experience  as  a  traveller  has  taught  me 
that  there  are  a  few  tests  that  can  be  made  by  a 
casual  observer  within  a  few  hours'  visit  to  any 
city  or  country,  and  which  are  a  sure  indication  of 
the  prevailing  level  of  pubhc  morality.  I  ob- 
serve to  what  extent  the  birds  in  the  parks  and 
pubUc  squares  are  afraid  of  human  beings; 
whether  there  are  many  silly  or  obscene  inscrip- 
tions on  walls,  doors,  etc.;  whether  a  crowd  of 
people  is  able  to  discipline  itself  when  entering 
a  street-  or  railroad-car  and  in  occupying  the 
space  within;  how  many  different  "classes"  there 


254     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

are  on  these,  as  an  indication  of  the  social  cleav- 
ages in  a  nation;  whether  the  tip  system  is  wide- 
spread or  not,  evidence  as  to  the  dignity  with 
which  human  labour  is  treated ;  whether  there  are 
many  signboards  in  public  places  synonymous 
with  the  ominous  German  Verhoten!  telling  how 
far  the  people  are  left  to  their  own  honour  to  be- 
have themselves  properly ;  whether  one  sees  much 
menial  or  heavy  labour  done  by  women  and  chil- 
dren; and  whether  the  quantity  of  papers  and 
offal  lying  about  on  park-lawns  and  similar  places 
denotes  a  public-spirited  citizenship. 

The  last  of  these  tests  is  the  only  one  in  which 
I  have  not  found  the  United  States  of  America 
to  beat  the  record  of  all  countries  I  have  visited; 
but  then  I  am  told  that,  especially  in  New  York, 
the  careless  throwing  about  of  papers  is  mostly 
due  to  the  large  percentage  of  non-assimilated 
immigrants.  Whether  this  be  so  or  not,  I  will 
gladly  admit  that  this  little  defect  may  be  ignored 
when  the  much  more  important  testimony  of 
some  of  the  other  experimental  observations  is 
considered.  The  first  day  I  landed  in  America, 
I  noticed  that  the  birds  and  squirrels  were  tamer 
than  anywhere  else;  that,  in  spite  of  the  motto 
"step  briskly  and  watch  your  step,"  the  crowds 
were  remarkably  well  discipUned.  I  found  there 
was  practically  only  one  class  on  the  railroads  as 
contrasted  with  the  characteristic  German  four 
class  system;  that  tips  were  much  less  generally 


IX    THE    LAND    OF    FREEDOM    255 

expected  than  on  the  backshish-ridden  Old  Conti- 
nent; that  very  few  things  were  officially  Fer- 
boten!  except  spitting  (and  I  had  no  reason  to 
regret  this  exception) ;  that  there  was  obviously 
a  much  greater  respect  for  childhood  and  woman- 
hood than  in  Europe.  In  all  my  six  months' 
journey  through  the  States  I  only  once  noticed 
an  obscene  inscription  on  a  wall,  and  then  it  was 
in  the  vernacular  of  a  country  of  Latin  Europe 
which  the  desire  to  avoid  a  rupture  in  the  Entente 
forbids  me  to  mention. 

Thus  I  fell  in  love  with  America,  at  first  sight. 
This  love  was  deepened  by  a  six  months'  passion- 
ate intercourse  with  her  spirit,  as  it  spoke  to  me 
from  her  factories,  her  universities,  her  cities,  her 
vast  landscapes,  her  common  people  and  her 
prominent  citizens.  It  ripened  into  the  resolve 
that,  unless  the  outcome  of  the  war  should  make 
my  two  little  children  citizens  of  the  "United 
States  of  the  World,"  I  would  give  them  a  chance 
of  becoming  citizens  of  the  United  States  of 
America.  I  am  going  to  carry  out  this  resolve 
now  that  the  inability  of  the  Old  Continent  to 
rise  to  the  height  of  the  new  ideals  seems  to  prove 
that  the  only  country  where  life  is  worth  living  is 
the  one  that  stands  for — to  quote  Abraham  Lin- 
coln— "That  sentiment  in  the  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence which  gave  liberty  not  alone  to  the 
people  of  this  country,  but  hope  to  all  the  world, 
for  all  future  time    •     .     .     which  gave  promise 


256     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

that  in  due  time  the  weight  should  be  taken  from 
the  shoulders  of  all  men,  and  that  all  should  have 
an  equal  chance." 

What,  then,  makes  me  love  America  is  neither 
its  natural  beauty  nor  its  huge  wealth  and  indus- 
trial development.  It  is  the  idealism  that  per- 
meates its  public  institutions,  and  the  higher 
quality  given  to  the  life  of  its  citizens  by  its  faith 
in  democracy,  freedom,  the  sanctity  of  labour, 
the  equality  of  opportunity  it  offers  to  all  men. 

I  do  not  think  that  America  is  really  more 
beautiful  than  Europe ;  its  beauty  is  merely  dif- 
ferent. Its  scenery  is  less  varied,  and  for  all  the 
impressiveness  of  its  huge  natural  wonders  and 
broad  expanses,  it  lacks  the  subtlety  of  charm 
which  a  more  intimate  blending  of  nature  with 
human  life  has  given  to  European  landscapes. 
America  is  still  camping  on  her  soil;  Europe  is  at 
home  on  hers.  Europe  has  the  charm  of  her  his- 
toric cities,  the  endless  variety  of  her  architecture, 
the  quaintness  of  her  patriarchal  village  life  that 
for  generation  on  generation  has  been  identified 
with  the  peculiar  atmosphere  of  local  scenery. 
Nature  itself  witnesses  almost  everywhere  to  the 
impress  of  himian  hands  in  the  fields,  the  hedges, 
the  roadside  trees,  along  the  brooks  and  rivers, 
while,  to  those  who  yearn  for  "nature  una- 
dorned," Europe  can  offer  the  solitude  of  Alpine 
heights,  forests,  moorlands,  steppes  and  lonely 
shores,  where  one  can  meet  Pan  face  to  face  as 


IN   THE    LAND    OF   FREEDOM    257 

easily  as  in  the  mountains  or  deserts  of  America. 

As  to  the  immense  naturaf  wealth  of  the  New 
Continent  and  the  superior  productivity  of  its 
industry,  these  are  only  a  condition  to  a  better 
and  a  happier  life.  In  themselves  lies  no  vii-tue. 
They  would  indeed  be  a  curse  were  it  true  that 
they  have  made  the  nation  worshippers  of  Mam- 
mon. But  I  know  they  have  not.  Thanks  to 
democracy,  superior  wealth  has  not  merely  re- 
sulted, as  many  would  have  us  believe,  in  an  ab- 
normal accumulation  of  riches  in  the  hands  of  a 
few  monopoUsts.  On  the  contrary,  it  has  raised 
the  standard  of  living  for  all  classes  far  above 
the  European  level.  Thus,  if  it  has  not  created 
civilisation  in  the  higher  sense  of  the  term,  it  has 
at  least  made  it  possible  for  great  masses  of  the 
people  to  enjoy  it.  And  the  latter  are  those  who 
in  Europe  would  be  denied  all  access  to  the  world 
of  culture,  harassed  as  they  are  by  the  ceaseless, 
sordid  struggle  for  mere  existence,  deprived  of 
even  a  minimum  of  comfort  and  leisure,  shut  off 
by  class  prejudices  from  all  real  share  in  public 
education. 

When  all  is  said,  I  am  not  at  all  sure  that 
America's  superiority  in  natural  resources  is 
so  indisputable,  provided  we  take  Europe  as  a 
whole,  and  not  a  particular  European  country, 
as  a  term  of  comparison.  Those  Europeans 
who,  because  they  refuse  to  admit  the  backward- 
ness of  their  methods  of  production,  argue  that 


258     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

the  higher  standard  of  living  of  the  American 
people  is  solely  due  to  their  greater  natural  re- 
sources, forget  that  these  resources  are  divided 
over  a  territory  as  big  as  that  of  Europe.  It  is 
a  much  longer  journey,  for  instance,  from  the 
Californian  oil-fields,  the  Montana  metal  mines, 
or  the  Pennsylvanian  coal-pits,  to  New  England, 
Chicago,  or  Detroit,  than  that  required  for  Ga- 
lician  oil,  Scandinavian  or  Spanish  ore,  or  coal 
from  British,  German,  Belgian  or  French  mines 
to  reach  any  industrial  plant  located  between  the 
Atlantic  Ocean,  the  Black  Sea  and  the  Mediter- 
ranean. Wheat  has  to  travel  no  further  on  its 
way  from  Russia  or  Hungary  to  Antwerp,  than 
it  has  in  going  from  Kansas  City  to  New  York. 
My  survey  of  industrial  methods  in  America 
has  convinced  me  that  the  chief  reason  of 
Europe's  comparative  poverty  is  to  be  sought 
elsewhere.  It  lies  in  the  backwardness  of  meth- 
ods of  production,  which  lack  concentration, 
standardisation  and  scientific  foresight  and  re- 
search. Coupled  with  this  backwardness  there 
is  the  strength  of  class  prejudices,  sanctified  by 
traditions  rooted  in  feudalism,  that  refuse  to  the 
labouring  masses  the  benefit  of  hygienic  condi- 
tions and  of  an  education  that  would  make  them 
at  the  same  time  more  useful  citizens  and  more 
capable  producers.  Moreover,  the  intellectual 
inertia  of  the  administrative  and  bureaucratic 
classes  in  Europe  is  incompatible  with  the  effi- 


IN    THE    LAND    OF    FREEDOM    259 

ciency  and  alertness  required  by  modern  indus- 
trialism. Last,  but  not  least,  the  Old  Continent 
labours  under  the  disadvantage  of  political  insti- 
tutions that  were  adapted  to  forms  of  economic 
life  very  different  from  the  present  ones,  and  of 
economic  frontiers  between  countries  which  are 
really  as  interdependent  as  are  the  States  of  the 
American  Union.  Old  Goethe  had  the  right  in- 
tuition of  the  cause  of  America's  superiority 
when  he  said : 

"Amerika,  du  hast  es  besser 
Als  unser  continent,  der  Alte; 
Hast  keine  verfallenen  Schlosser 
Und  keine  Basalte." 

The  progress  of  American  methods  of  produc- 
tion and  of  the  political  institutions  correspond- 
ing to  them  has  not  been  hampered  as  in  Europe 
by  the  survivals  which  those  "ruined  castles" 
symbohse.  I  do  not  know  whether  absolute  re- 
liance can  be  placed  on  the  calculation  made  by 
Mr.  Ellis  Barker,  who  estimates  that  the  average 
American  working-man  produces,  within  a  given 
period  of  time,  about  two  or  three  times  as  much 
as  the  British  worker,  largely  because  American 
industry  utilises  three  horse-power  engines  to  one 
horse-power  in  England.  But  there  certainly  is 
a  very  considerable  difference  between  the  pro- 
ductivity— i.e.,  between  the  output  corresponding 
to  a  given  human  effort — of  America  and  of 
Europe. 


260     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

Bolsheviks  would  probably  retort  that  it 
merely  proves  America  to  be  the  most  intensively 
capitalist  of  all  countries.  And  from  this  they 
evidently  conclude — according  to  their  naive  ar- 
gument which  opposes  the  category  socialism 
to  the  category  capitalism — ^that  it  is  also  the 
most  degraded.  But  let  any  European  social- 
ist, Bolshevik  or  not,  candidly  ask  himself  to 
what  European  socialism  owes  its  peculiar  com- 
bativeness,  and,  to  a  large  extent,  its  very  exist- 
ence as  a  mass  movement.  Will  he  not  confess 
that  socialism  owes  what  it  has  won  rather  to  its 
opposition  to  survivals  from  the  pre-capitahstic 
period,  both  in  the  institutions  and  in  the  public 
spirit,  than  to  the  essence  of  capitalism  itself?  I 
for  one  have  my  answer  ready.  In  a  country 
like  America  capitalism  is  "pure,"  by  which  I 
mean  that  it  has  developed  in  an  atmosphere  of 
national  self-government,  political  freedom  and 
equality  of  chances  and  rights.  It  is  thus  the 
"pure"  political  reflex  of  the  spirit  of  competitive 
capitalist  production.  I  beheve  that  in  such  an 
atmosphere  sociahsm  can  evolve  gradually  and 
experimentally  from  capitahsm  by  the  mere  play 
of  the  tendency  to  indefinite  improvement  in  ef- 
ficiency which  is  inherent  to  the  competitive  sys- 
tem, and  by  the  movement  towards  more  and 
more  political  self-determination  of  the  masses, 
which  gives  them  the  power  to  counteract  the 
detrimental  effects  of  monopolisation. 


IN    THE    LAND    OF    FREEDOM    261 

There  is  no  clearer  proof  of  this  than  the  fail- 
ure of  all  attempts  that  have  so  far  been  made 
to  acclimatise  European  sociaUsm  in  America. 
Even  if  the  anti-war  attitude  of  the  Socialist 
Party  of  America  had  not  caused  the  majority 
of  American-born  socialists  to  leave  the  party, 
its  traditional  methods  would  never  have  ap- 
pealed to  the  American  spirit,  for  they  were 
European  and  not  American.  This  party  is  in 
fact  a  federation  of  unassimilated  immigrants 
trying  to  import  ideas,  which  may  correspond  to 
the  conditions  in  their  native  countries,  but  cer- 
tainly not  to  those  that   prevail  in  America. 

Whilst  in  the  United  States,  I  re-read  Morris 
Hilquitt's  history  of  American  socialism.  I 
think  it  as  representative  of  that  Socialist  Party's 
stubborn  determination  to  ignore  America  as  is 
its  author  of  the  cosmopolitan,  un-American 
class  that  forms  the  bulk  of  its  membership.  It 
dwells  extensively  on  the  history  and  vicissitudes 
of  the  tiny  colonies  and  sects  created  by  emi- 
grants and  exiles  from  Europe  on  what  they  con- 
sidered as  the  virgin  soil  of  the  New  Continent. 
But  there  is  not  a  word  about  American  democ- 
racy, just  as  though  there  were  no  difference  at 
all  between,  say,  Russian  Czardom  and  the 
United  States. 

I  find  more  potential  socialism  in  the  Decla- 
ration of  Independence,  in  the  speeches  of  Abra- 
ham Lincoln  and  Woodrow  Wilson,  than  in  any 


262     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

of  the  so-called  socialists'  abortive  attempts  to 
raise  cabbages  by  the  same  method  as  that  of 
our  ancestors  at  the  time  of  primitive  com- 
munism. A  movement  that  claims  the  support 
of  the  masses,  yet  deliberately  refuses  to  appeal 
to  their  ideals  and  to  utilise  the  power  of  their 
national  traditions  for  an  ulterior  development 
that  lies  entirely  on  the  same  lines  as  those  tra- 
ditions, has  no  right  to  complain  if  the  national 
community  behaves  towards  it  like  any  living 
organism  that  obeys  the  natural  law  of  the  elimi- 
nation of  foreign  bodies. 

But  then  the  word  socialism  probably  means 
something  quite  different  to  me  than  it  does  to 
them.  Socialism  in  European  countries,  as  Bol- 
shevikism  and  German  social-democracy  show,  is 
naturally  undemocratic  to  the  same  extent  as  the 
government  it  opposes.  Democratic  socialism 
can  only  arise  from  democratic  capitalism,  and, 
as  far  as  I  am  concerned,  the  war  has  cured  me 
of  any  possible  inclination  to  believe  that  social- 
ism is  worth  striving  for  unless  it  be  democratic. 

It  will  have  appeared  already,  from  my  re- 
marks in  a  previous  chapter  about  present-day 
democracy  being  a  system  of  government  by  the 
minority  which  makes  public  opinion,  that  I  am 
not  blind  to  the  limitations  of  even  as  pure  a 
democratic  system  as  that  of  the  American  com- 
monwealth. My  conclusion  then  was  that  the 
great  superiority  of  democracy  consisted  in  its 


IN    THE    LAND    OF    FREEDOM    263 

intrinsic  tendency  to  progressive  enlightenment 
of  the  people  ruled,  and  to  the  numerical  in- 
crease of  those  who  are  invested  with  leadership 
because  of  their  ability  to  lead — and  not  because 
of  mere  chances  of  fortune  or  heredity.  Politi- 
cal democracy  has  not  made  an  earthly  paradise 
out  of  the  United  States,  nor  has  it  even  pre- 
vented economic  waste,  exploitation,  poverty, 
corruption,  injustice,  intolerance,  ignorance,  and 
all  the  other  social  evils  inseparable  from  the  very 
existence  of  economic  privilege.  Yet,  by  sup- 
pressing political  privilege,  it  has  created  an  in- 
strument (the  only  efficient  instrument  under 
present  conditions)  by  which  a  nation  can  grad- 
ually reduce  these  evils  and  finally  bring  about 
the  suppression  of  economic  privilege  itself.  In 
a  real  democracy  the  people  live  under  the  eco- 
nomic system  they  deserve,  for  they  have  the 
power  to  change  it  if  they  convince  the  majority 
that  such  change  is  desirable. 

Most  of  the  imperfections  of  American  democ- 
racy, however,  seem  to  me  to  result  from  the  com- 
parative youthfulness  of  American  civilisation. 
To  this  youthfulness  America  is  largely  indebted 
for  the  wonderful  energy  and  the  daring  spirit 
of  enterprise  of  its  peoples.  But  the  reverse  of 
the  medal  is  that  America  somewhat  lacks  that 
sense  of  measure  which  is  a  condition  to  thorough 
discrimination  in  the  sphere  of  intellectual  life 
and  to  refined  taste  in  that  of  art.    I  found  evi- 


264    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

dence  of  this  lack  of  measure,  of  this  exuberance, 
in  the  attitude  towards  the  war  of  a  very  large 
section  of  the  American  press  and  of  public  opin- 
ion in  the  summer  of  1918.  It  seemed  to  me  that 
there  was  then,  in  the  manifestations  of  national 
hatred,  a  tendency  to  sin  more  against  fair  dis- 
crimination of  judgment  and  good  taste  in  voic- 
ing the  fighting  determination  of  the  country 
than  was  to  be  found  even  in  those  countries,  like 
Belgium  and  Northern  France,  which  had  far 
more  immediate  reasons  to  be  exasperated  than 
America.  In  our  European  countries,  the  longer 
duration  of  the  ordeal,  the  very  excess  of  suffer- 
ing, and  the  proximity  to  the  fighting  front 
(which  gave  the  civihan  element  a  better  realisa- 
tion of  the  tragic  earnestness  of  a  soldier's  life) 
taught  them  that  restraint  and  reticence  in  the 
expression  of  their  hatred  best  befit  those  who 
have  to  leave  the  actual  doing  to  others.  If  I 
am  to  judge  by  President  Wilson's  utterances 
against  mob  rule  and  spy  mania,  and  by  General 
Pershing's  reiterated  action  against  the  spread- 
ing of  tales  regarding  imaginary  atrocities — the 
real  atrocities  were  bad  enough!^ — there  must 
have  been  occasions  when  war  enthusiasm  in 
America  had  a  tendency  to  degrade  into  war  hys- 
teria. I  myself  found  some  less  harmful  mani- 
festations of  it  when  traveUing  through  the 
States,  for  I  met  a  considerable  number  of  vari- 
eties of  the  species  "man  in  the  street"  or  "man 


IN    THE    LAND    OF   FREEDOM    265 

in  the  train"  who  probably  thought  they  would 
highly  please  me  by  telling  me  how  sorry  they 
were  they  could  not  be  "over  there";  how  nice 
it  must  be  to  kill  "Boches"  at  the  front  every 
day ;  and  the  exact  refinement  of  torture  to  which 
they  would  put  "Kaiser  Bill"  and  "Little  Wil- 
lie" if  they  ever  got  hold  of  them.  Now,  I  am 
well  aware  that  the  harmless  puerihty  of  this  and 
some  other  forms  of  "Boche-eating"  was  no  ac- 
curate criterion  of  the  real  state  of  mind  of  the 
people,  whom  on  the  whole  I  found  to  be  inspired 
by  a  deeper  and  more  ideal  realisation  of  the 
issues  at  stake  than  any  European  nation.  Yet 
in  France,  England  or  Belgium,  the  general  dis- 
countenancing of  all  such  futile  talk  would  prob- 
ably have  made  this  uninteresting  species  more 
reticent  and  less  obtrusive  than  I  found  it  to  be 
in  America. 

The  same  weakness  of  the  sense  of  proportion 
I  am  inchned  to  hold  responsible  for  the  differ- 
ence between  the  American  and  the  European 
outlook  on  art.  I  purposely  use  the  word  differ- 
ence, because  I  no  longer  beUeve,  as  most  Euro- 
peans do,  and  as  I  did  myself  until  I  visited 
America,  in  the  superiority  of  European  aesthetic 
culture. 

The  higher  forms  of  art  were  inseparable  hith- 
erto from  the  existence  of  a  leisured  class.  Europe 
has  had  such  classes  for  centuries;  e.  g.,  the  hour- 


266    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

geois  patricians  who  gave  work  to  her  painters, 
the  aristocracy  who  enabled  her  musicians  to  com- 
pose masterpieces,  the  benefit  of  which  has  for- 
tunately become  more  general  and  lasting  than 
that  of  the  mere  charming  of  their  patrons'  idle 
hours.  Such  leisured  classes  America  has  never 
had.  Indeed,  she  has  hardly  had  time  to  start 
an  artistic  tradition  of  her  own;  for  even  now 
American  genius  is  mostly  utilised  in  the  pro- 
duction of  material  wealth  and  in  scientific  re- 
search. The  few  Americans  who  are  able  to  win 
leisure  from  such  pursuits  usually  go  to  enjoy  it 
in  Europe.  America  has  no  artistic  Boheme  like 
the  countries  of  the  European  continent  where 
this  is  a  class  by  itself.  She  has  excellent  paint- 
ers and  musicians;  but  so  far  they  have  practi- 
cally all  borrowed  from  the  accimiulated  fund  of 
European  craftsmanship  and  tradition. 

All  this  I  think  will  easily  be  granted.  But  it 
does  not  follow  that  American  artistic  culture  is 
as  a  whole  inferior  to  that  of  Europe.  American 
architecture,  for  instance,  has  an  originality  all 
its  own,  not  only  as  a  science  of  building,  but  as 
an  art  corresponding  to  the  needs  and  technical 
means  of  modern  hfe.  As  such,  it  is  much  more 
individual,  more  really  artistic,  than  most  mod- 
ern European  architecture.  The  latter  is 
cramped  to  such  an  extent  by  conventional 
styles,  corresponding  to  historical  epochs  and 


IN    THE    LAND    OF    FREEDOM    267 

even  to  climates  entirely  different  from  our  own, 
that  it  seems  unable  to  stand  the  supreme  test  of 
architectural  beauty:  perfect  adaptation  of  the 
builder's  material  to  his  purpose.  Americans 
who  want  to  enjoy  the  beauty  of  the  classic,  the 
mediseval,  or  the  Renaissance  period,  will  have 
to  cross  the  Atlantic  and  see  Greek  and  Sicil- 
ian temples,  Roman  arches,  Gothic  cathedrals, 
French  or  EngUsh  castles  and  mansions.  But 
to  me  there  is  more  live  beauty  in  some  of  the 
American  sky-scrapers,  at  least  m  those  that  are 
emancipated  from  the  tyranny  of  European  con- 
vention, than  there  is  in  the  pretentious,  imcom- 
fortable,  and  pseudo-historical  modern  buildings, 
lifted,  as  it  were,  bodily  out  of  some  handbook 
on  architecture,  and  lumped  down  at  haphaz- 
ard in  the  cities  of  the  Old  Continent.  Now, 
architecture  is  an  important  indication  of  the 
artistic  level  of  a  civiUsation.  It  is  the  symbolic 
art  par  excellence,  the  most  direct  and  the  earli- 
est expression  of  the  spirit  of  an  epoch  and  of  a 
people.  Moreover,  it  is  the  most  democratic  of 
all  arts,  since  the  constant  sight  of  its  works  by 
the  masses  is  a  far  more  effective  means  to  edu- 
cate their  taste  than  any  amount  of  framed  mas- 
terpieces hung  up  in  museums  or  cabinets. 

Let  us  ask  ourselves  by  what  standard  the 
aesthetic  level  of  national  culture  can  be  judged. 
Only  narrow-minded  class  prejudice  will  answer 


268    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

that  it  is  the  maximum  limit  of  refinement 
reached  by  a  small  minority.  Even  then,  the  only 
superiority  Europe  could  claim  would  be  that 
her  cultured  minority  is  more  numerous  than  that 
of  America;  for  some  of  the  American  connois- 
seurs will  prove  a  match  for  any  European.  But 
is  not  the  average  degree  of  culture  reached  by 
the  population  at  large  a  much  sounder  criterion? 
Judged  according  to  this,  we  shall  find  Europe's 
present  superiority  very  doubtful  indeed.  True, 
more  good  music  is  produced  in  Europe's  con- 
cert halls  and  opera-houses,  and  more  good  plays 
in  her  theatres,  than  on  the  other  side  of  the 
water.  But,  in  both  continents,  these  only  attract 
a  small  minority.  The  taste  of  the  vast  majority 
of  the  people  in  this  respect  can  be  best  judged 
by  the  productions  of  the  music-halls,  "picture 
shows,"  and  second-class  theatres.  As  far  as  my 
experience  reaches,  I  am  inclined  to  say  that  the 
artistic  level  of  these  productions  is  a  good  deal 
lower  in  Europe  than  in  America.  Again,  there 
are  fewer  pianos  and  more  gramophones  in 
American  than  in  European  homes;  but  I  can- 
didly confess  that  I  think  any  real  tune  played 
on  a  good  gramaphone  as  enjoyable  and  as 
profitable  to  the  education  of  musical  taste  as 
most  of  the  mediocre  piano-rattling  which  is  con- 
sidered to  give  the  finishing  touch  to  the  daugh- 
ters   of    the    petty-bourgeoisie    of    continental 


IN    THE    LAND    OF    FREEDOM    269 

Europe,  whose  supreme  ambition  is  to  be  able 
to  make  a  sauce  hearnaise,  to  speak  a  dozen 
words  of  English  sporting  slang,  and  to  play  a 
"piano-romance"  with  both  hands. 

As  to  the  visual  test,  I  know  of  none  more 
fundamental  than  the  way  in  which  the  women 
dress  and  the  people  furnish  their  houses.  I  am 
here  on  very  controversial  ground,  yet  I  venture 
to  affirm  that  American  women  generally  dress 
with  more  taste  than  do  those  of  Europe,  perhaps 
not  even  excepting  the  Parisiennes.  With  re- 
gard to  the  furnishing  of  American  homes,  I  have 
visited  enough  of  all  classes  on  both  continents 
to  be  still  more  emphatic  as  to  American  superi- 
ority in  taste  in  this  respect.  Much  more  origi- 
nality is  displayed  there  than  in  Europe,  where 
the  tyranny  of  the  conventional  "styles"  smoth- 
ers every  attempt  to  individualise  or  even  to  con- 
sider practicabihty.  There  is  nothing  surprising 
about  this  if  one  asks  the  question  whether  any 
art  can  flourish  where  there  is  not  a  minimum  of 
air,  light,  cleanliness  and  comfort  higher  than 
that  which  prevails  in  the  so-called  homes  of  the 
majority  of  Europe's  population. 

No,  the  relative  imperfection  of  the  sense  of 
measure  and  nuances,  above  referred  to,  is  but 
the  price  that  America  pays  for  her  individualism 
and  energy.  Let  her  pay  it  gladly.  The  weak- 
nesses of  youth  are  the  easiest  to  cure.    Say  what 


270     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

one  will  about  the  difference  between  American 
and  European  civilisation,  there  can  only  be  one 
conclusion:  they  compare  with  each  other  like 
youth  and  old  age.  It  is  not  to  the  latter  that  the 
future  belongs.  Of  all  the  lessons  of  the  Great 
War,  perhaps  none  is  so  incontrovertible  as  this. 


XI 


THE  NEW   SOCIALISM 

Quand  je  serai  mort,  berger,  tu  d6truiras  toutes  les  vieilles 
semences.  EUes  sont  pleines  de  poussieres  mauvaises;  ellea  sont 
rongees;  elles  sont  moisies.  Ce  n'est  plus  avec  ellea  que  le  sol 
c61ebrera  ses  fian^ailles.  Et  toi  qui  as  6te  partout,  tu  resemeras 
dans  mon  champ,  dans  mon  clos,  des  graines  nouvelles;  des 
graines  toutes  vives,  toutes  fraiches,  toutes  belles,  que  tu  as  vuea 
et  reconnues  bonnes,  Ift-bas,  aux  contrees  vierges  de  la  terre.   .  .  • 

Emile  Veehaeben.    Les  AuheSy  I. 


I  CANNOT  better  synthesise  the  changes  worked 
in  my  mind  by  the  succession  of  experiences  de- 
scribed in  the  previous  chapters  than  by  setting 
forth  what  are  now  my  views  on  the  task  of  the 
labor  movement. 

Whether  the  ascent  of  labour  to  political  power, 
which  in  Europe  at  least  is  synonymous  with  the 
triumph  of  sociaUsm,  be  viewed  with  sympathy 
or  not,  does  not  alter  the  fact  that  it  must  now 
be  reckoned  with  as  a  near  probabiHty.  The 
Russian  Soviet  Republic,  Germany,  German- 
Austria  and  Hungary  are  already  under  the 
socialist  rule.  In  most  of  the  other  European 
countries,  especially  those  where  industrialism  is 
highly  developed,  hke  England  or  Belgium,  the 
sociaUst  labour  movement  is  progressing  with 
such  gigantic  strides,  and  deriving  such  an  in- 

271 


272     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

creased  impetus  from  the  growing  amount  of 
social  discontent  resulting  from  the  economic 
after-effects  of  the  war,  that  the  time  seems  close 
at  hand  when  the  majority  of  European  coun- 
tries will  have  socialist  governments. 

The  remaking  of  the  world,  or  at  least  of 
Europe,  which  the  war  has  rendered  unavoidable 
appears  much  less  as  the  rearrangement  of  fron- 
tiers or  the  creation  of  new  juridical  forms  for 
the  settlement  of  international  disputes,  than  as 
a  reforming  of  the  social  institutions  and  of  the 
public  spirit  of  which  the  war  itself  was  a  result. 

I  would  not  have  thought  it  worth  while  to 
retrace  the  remaking  of  one  mind  out  of  milhons, 
if  I  had  not  considered  it  as  a  clue,  however  small 
and  imperfect,  to  the  remaking  of  the  collective 
mind  that  is  in  its  turn  to  cause  the  remaking  of 
the  world.  If  it  be  true  then  that  the  compulsion 
of  historical  causes,  which  can  no  longer  be  con- 
trolled by  any  human  being,  is  going  to  entrust 
sociaUsm  with  this  task,  let  us  try  to  discern  the 
main  characteristics  of  post-war  socialism. 

One  outstanding  fact  strikes  us  at  once. 
European  sociahsm  has  no  longer  the  unity  it 
seemed  to  have  before  the  war.  There  are  two 
antagonistic  conceptions,  between  which  the 
abyss  is  widening  more  and  more  every  day. 
There  is  Bolshevikism,  which  beheves  in  the 
estabhshment  of  sociahsm  through  the  dictator- 


THE    NEW    SOCIALISM         273 

ship  of  force;  and  there  is  democratic  social- 
ism, which  conceives  socialism  as  the  outcome  of 
the  freely  expressed  will  of  a  majority.  The 
despotic  form  of  the  new  social  order  prevails  in 
the  countries  of  Eastern  and  Central  Europe 
where  previously  autocratic  despotism  ruled; 
democratic  socialism  is  predominant  in  the  demo- 
cratic states  of  Western  Europe. 

Bolshevikism  and  anarchy  may  be  a  necessary, 
though  painful,  stage  in  the  development  of  the 
eastern  half  of  Europe  from  despotism  to  free- 
dom, justifying  Nietzsche's  saying  that  there 
must  be  chaos,  so  that  from  this  chaos  new  stars 
may  arise.  To  democratic  countries,  however,  it 
rightly  appears  as  a  danger,  for  it  is  destructive 
of  that  very  freedom  which  is  the  motive  power 
of  their  progressive  development. 

Yet  Bolshevikism  is  not  by  any  means  confined 
to  Eastern  and  Central  Europe.  It  exists,  as  a 
latent  or  an  active  force,  wherever,  through  ex- 
cess of  grievances  or  lack  of  adequate  machinery 
for  their  adjustment,  conditions  obtain  that  make 
the  masses  despair  of  any  other  means  of  redress 
save  the  spontaneous  use  of  violence.  Even  in 
the  United  States,  and  apart  from  alien  move- 
ments like  that  of  the  Sociahst  Party,  there  are 
sporadic  outbreaks  of  Bolshevikism.  They  are 
the  morbid  reactions  of  such  exceptional  indig- 
enous conditions  as  those  to  which  rehable  social 


274.    THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

observers  and  the  Federal  authorities  themselves 
attribute  the  I.  W.  W.  movement  in  the  migra- 
tory industries  of  the  West.  In  Europe,  where 
this  war  has  left  the  victorious  peoples  in  a  state 
of  impoverishment  and  demorahsation  even  worse 
than  that  suffered  by  defeated  peoples  in  any  pre- 
vious war,  the  germs  of  BolsheviMsm  are  as  wide- 
spread as  those  of  Spanish  influenza. 

We  shall  doubtless  have  at  least  two  "Interna- 
tionales" instead  of,  as  before  the  war,  only  one. 
There  will  be  that  of  the  Bolshevik  labour  move- 
ment, which  will  probably  label  itself  "commu- 
nist," and  that  of  the  democratic  socialists.  The 
former  will  comprise  the  majorities  of  Eastern 
Europe  and  the  minorities — originally  gathered 
together  by  the  Zimmerwald  "internationalist" 
movement — of  the  other  countries.  The  latter 
will  mainly  differ  from  the  old  "Internationale" 
(essentially  a  European  organisation  dominated 
by  German  social-democracy)  in  the  predomi- 
nance of  the  Anglo-Saxon  element  and  view- 
point. This  will  shift  its  moral  centre  of  gravity 
westward  and  render  extra-European  expansion 
more  feasible  than  it  was  with  the  old  "Interna- 
tionale." 

Although  there  are  already  many  objective  in- 
dications of  what  the  spirit  of  this  "western"  In- 
ternationale is  likely  to  be,  conditions  are  still  so 
imsettled  that  it  is  impossible  to  state  its  charac- 


THE    NEW    SOCIALISM         275 

teristics  without  making  large  allowances  for  the 
inaccuracy  of  one's  individual  outlook.  Yet  I 
think  I  may  say  that  at  the  utmost  only  mere 
shades  of  opinion  differentiate  my  personal  view- 
point from  that  of  the  Belgian  Labour  Party  as 
a  whole,  and  from  the  opinions  of  men  as  repre- 
sentative of  post-war  democratic  socialism  as  the 
Belgian  Vandervelde,  the  Frenchman  Albert 
Thomas,  the  Englishman  Arthur  Henderson,  or 
the  Swede  Hjalmar  Branting.  My  own  mental 
evolution  can  therefore  be  taken  as  to  some  ex- 
tent characteristic  of  the  general  revision  of  dem- 
ocratic sociahsm  in  Europe. 

The  outstanding  feature  of  this  new  socialism 
seems  to  me  the  recognition  of  the  essential  im- 
portance of  pohtical  democracy.  This,  first  of 
all,  refers  to  the  method  by  which  a  new  social 
order  is  to  be  brought  about;  i.  e.,  the  gradual 
seizure  of  political  power  through  propaganda 
aimed  at  forming  a  majority.  But  it  also  means 
that  this  new  social  order  must  be  based  on  the 
principle  of  government  by  the  consent  of  the 
governed,  with  all  the  correctives  to  unbounded 
majority-rule  implied  by  the  constitutionally 
safeguarded  hberties  of  opinion,  press,  speech, 
and  opposition  by  representative  bodies.  Only 
the  continual  and  indefinite  development  of  such 
liberties,  and  the  making  of  their  organisation 
more  and  more  adequate  to  the  intricacy  of  mod- 


276     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

ern  administration,  can  prevent  socialism  from 
tm-ning  into  a  form  of  despotism.  And  a  despot- 
ism such  as  this  would  entrust  a  tyrannic  and 
incapable  officialdom  with  a  power  more  absolute 
than  that  of  any  Czar,  since  it  would  fetter  not 
only  the  pohtical,  but  also  the  economic,  destinies 
of  the  people. 

There  is  no  worse  menace  to  democratic  so- 
ciahsm  than  State  sociahsm,  which  seems  to  be 
the  aim  of  the  socialists  in  Central  and  Eastern 
Europe.  The  tendency  towards  state  sociahsm 
is  incidentally  aggravated  by  three  circum- 
stances common  at  present  to  all  European 
countries:  the  crisis  in  parliamentarianism,  the 
danger  of  bureaucracy,  and  the  lack  of  adminis- 
trative abihty  among  the  masses. 

Russia  is  a  warning  of  the  menace  to  economic 
life,  and  to  civihsation  in  general,  that  lies  in  the 
ascent  to  power  of  masses  who  in  their  normal 
conditions  of  hfe  have  never  been  given  opportu- 
nity to  acquire  that  minimum  of  knowledge  and 
administrative  capacity  without  which  govern- 
ment becomes  technically  impossible.  This  dan- 
ger is  less,  of  course,  in  the  rest  of  Europe,  yet 
everywhere  the  actual  power  of  labour,  both  in 
the  political  and  industrial  field,  has  a  tendency  to 
increase  faster  than  its  administrative  capacity. 
My  position  as  chief  of  the  Belgian  Labour 
Party's  educational  department  (which  aimed  at 
reducing  this  very  discrepancy)  has  taught  me 


THE    NEW    SOCIALISM         277 

that  even  the  empiric  education  which  thousands 
of  workingmen  get  through  their  practical  ac- 
tivity in  the  trade  union  and  co-operative  move- 
ments is  powerless  to  achieve  this  end.  On 
the  minds  of  most  of  these  men — whom  the  care- 
lessness of  pubhc  authorities  has  left  scandalously- 
ignorant — this  activity  of  a  very  restricted  range 
during  a  few  leisure  hours  has,  rather,  a  narrow- 
ing effect,  which  only  a  better  general  education 
in  pubhc  schools  and  through  the  labour  move- 
ment's own  institutions  can  counterbalance.  The 
Belgian  socialist,  Emile  Vandervelde,  was  think- 
ing of  this  widespread  ignorance  when  he  once 
said  that  he  wished  his  party  to  be  put  as  late  as 
possible  "through  the  ordeal  of  political  power." 
This  problem  calls  all  the  more  for  solution  as 
the  crisis  in  West-European  parhamentarianism 
makes  it  clearer  every  day  that  the  abilities  re- 
quired by  a  government,  in  the  increasingly  broad 
sense  which  this  term  assumes,  are  very  different 
from  those  that  adorn  the  lawyers  who  make  such 
beautiful  speeches  in  our  Parliaments.  Too  long 
has  parhamentarianism  been  confused  with  de- 
mocracy. European  experience  shows  more  and 
more  that  parhamentarianism  is  but  one  aspect, 
and  that  not  even  an  essential  one,  of  the  self- 
government  of  nations.  The  intricacy  of  admin- 
istrative problems  grows  as  the  field  of  state  and 
mimicipal  activity  expands  and  as  business  efB- 


278     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

ciency  requires  an  increasing  division  of  func- 
tions and  individual  responsibility.  The  role  of 
ministers  is  practically  reduced  to  that  of  politi- 
cal liaison-agents  between  the  administrative,  the 
legislative,  and  the  executive  powers.  Their  for- 
mer activity  as  leaders  of  their  administration 
has  become  a  myth.  Where  public  bodies  man- 
age economic  undertakings,  they  have  as  a  rule 
proved  inefficient  and  wasteful  until  it  was  real- 
ised—as, indeed,  only  a  minority  of  European 
governments  have  realised  as  yet— that  the  au- 
thority of  parliamentary  bodies  in  such  cases  has 
had  to  be  reduced  to  a  mere  power  of  censure, 
whilst  the  technical  leaders  responsible  had  to  be 
given  an  administrative  autonomy  similar  to  that 
which  obtains  in  private  businesses.  In  parlia- 
mentary life  itself,  the  party  system  has  fossil- 
ised and  the  original  procedure  has  turned  into 
an  instrument  of  professional  intrigue  to  such 
an  extent  that  it  has  become  a  check  on  progres- 
sive legislation.  More  and  more,  therefore,  re- 
course to  the  plebiscite  seems  to  be  the  only  way 
of  securing  adequate  expression  of  the  popular 
will  as  to  the  merits  of  any  legislative  measure 
that  may  be  proposed. 

Therefore  the  new  socialism  cannot  confine  its 
aim  to  the  extension  of  the  rights  of  public  bodies 
in  the  field  of  economics.  There  is  probably  now 
in  the  main  European  countries  a  majority  con- 


THE    NEW    SOCIALISM         279 

vinced  that  private  property  in  land  and  in  the 
principal  means  of  production  and  transport  is 
no  longer  justified.  It  has  resulted  in  parasitism 
and  monopoly,  and  lost  the  impetus  originally 
derived  from  "free  competition."  There  seems 
to  be  no  alternative  left  but  to  nationalise  such 
land  properties  as  are  not  used  by  their  proprie- 
tors themselves,  and  to  estabhsh  pubHc  ownership 
of  railroads,  mines,  and  monopoUsed  industries 
generally.  Pre-war  sociaUsm  was  wont  to  con- 
ceive this  socialisation  as  a  very  easy  process.  It 
simply  meant  that  the  State  would  have  recourse 
to  expropriation,  with  or  without  indemnity,  or 
by  the  help  of  devices  like  the  single-tax  system, 
and  estabhsh  itself  as  the  manager  of  the  prop- 
erties thus  acquired.  Not  much  thought  was 
given  to  the  changes  that  would  have  to  take 
place  in  the  organisation  of  the  State  itself  in 
order  to  fit  it  for  such  a  task;  a  mere  quantitative 
extension  of  parhamentary  rule  was  all  that  was 
considered  necessary. 

But  now  that  socialism  has  exchanged  the 
stage  of  doctrinal  criticism  and  propaganda  for 
that  of  realisation,  it  can  no  longer  remain  bhnd 
to  the  fact  that  if  the  State,  as  it  exists  today, 
were  to  be  made  both  the  owner  of  such  a  large 
proportion  of  the  national  wealth  and  manager 
of  its  production,  it  would  only  be  putting  an  end 
to  some  of  the  abuses  of  private  monopoly  in 


280     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

order  to  increase  others.  Above  all,  this  might 
well  result  in  such  inefficiency  that  the  output 
would  be  seriously  reduced,  to  the  loss  of  the 
community  in  general. 

Now  that  this  problem  is  beginning  to  be  seri- 
ously tackled,  as  Emile  Vandervelde  has  re- 
cently done  in  his  book,  "SociaUsm  versus  State," 
it  is  being  realised  that  some  indispensable  safe- 
guard of  efficiency  and  real  democratic  control 
must  be  secured  before  any  further  extension  of 
public  ownership  takes  place.  The  right  of  own- 
ership can,  apparently,  be  left  to  the  State  with- 
out great  difficulty,  but  not  the  management. 
This  should  be  given  over  to  public  bodies,  under 
the  ultimate  control  of  national  legislation.  But 
a  considerable  amount  of  administrative  auton- 
omy must  be  given  and  the  collaboration  of  those 
actually  engaged  in  the  work  of  production  with 
its  local  management  must  be  allowed  for.  The 
movement  towards  industrial  democracy,  to 
which  war  conditions  have  universally  given  such 
a  strong  impetus,  shows  how  this  collaboration 
can  be  organised. 

The  progress  of  labour  unionism  has  already 
led,  in  quite  a  number  of  trades,  to  a  point  where 
conditions  of  labour  are  no  longer  autocratically 
fixed  by  the  employer,  but — through  the  instru- 
mentality of  collective  bargaining,  shop  steward- 
ship, factory  constitutions,  etc. — by  joint  bodies 


THE    NEW    SOCIALISM         281 

representing  both  the  employer  and  the  em- 
ployed. My  study  of  industrial  management  in 
the  United  States  and  abroad  has  convinced  me 
that  this  is  really  the  only  means  by  which  satis- 
factory conditions  of  labour  can  be  provisionally 
secured,  and  increased  productivity  attained, 
without  augmenting  the  individual  strain.  When 
labour  has  no  longer  to  come  to  terms  with  a 
"boss"  who  is  at  the  same  time  owner  and  mana- 
ger, the  problems  of  organised  collaboration  be- 
tween the  management  and  the  managed  will  be 
a  good  deal  easier  to  solve.  The  State  will  then 
have  to  intervene  only  to  prevent  industrial  de- 
mocracy from  turning  into  a  guild  system  for 
the  exploitation  of  the  community  either  through 
too  low  efficiency  or  too  high  prices. 

Personally  I  would  go  even  further  and  at 
least  as  a  transition  give  the  preference  to  a  sys- 
tem of  competitive  and  experimental  socialisa- 
tion, in  which  the  State  would  not  appear  as  an 
expropriator  save  in  cases  of  absolute  necessity, 
where  no  loss  of  productivity  is  to  be  feared,  like 
the  suppression  of  parasitic  landlordism.  Where 
industrial  production  is  concerned,  I  think  the 
most  effective  way  to  establish  forms  of  public 
ownership  and  democratic  management  would  be 
to  make  the  State — or,  rather,  a  democratically 
controlled  public  body  especially  equipped  for 
this  task  by  the  State — the  competitor  of  private 
enterprise,  which  would  be  deprived  of  its  mo- 


282     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

nopoly  by  such  competition.  Thus  the  evils  of 
private  enterprise* could  be  ultimately  suppressed 
without  losing  the  benefit  of  the  incentive  to  effi- 
cient management  and  high  output  which  lies  in 
competition,  whilst  the  experimental  character 
of  the  undertaking  would  facilitate  the  gradual 
adaptation  of  the  new  administrative  organisation 
to  the  economic  needs  of  the  case.  We  are  faced 
with  the  obvious  impossibility  of  preventing  Eu- 
ropean officialdom  from  becoming  an  obstacle  to 
progress  and  efficiency  wherever  the  incentive  of 
competition  is  eliminated  and  popular  control  be- 
comes increasingly  difficult  to  organise.  And  it 
is  this  that  makes  me  think  that  some  sort  of  pro- 
cedure such  as  that  suggested  will  most  likely 
have  to  be  adopted  by  democratic  socialism  when 
it  gets  to  work  on  the  task  of  socialisation. 

The  rise  of  capitalism  has  deprived  the  major- 
ity of  the  control  of  the  means  of  production  they 
are  using;  it  has  lengthened  the  hours  of  work 
beyond  the  measure  compatible  with  hygiene, 
happiness  and  culture ;  it  has  pauperised  artisans 
and  peasants ;  it  has  sent  the  women  and  children 
into  the  hell  of  factory  life ;  it  has  threatened  to 
turn  civilisation  into  a  slag  heap  by  robbing  hu- 
manity of  the  joy  of  life,  the  beauty  of  leisure, 
and  the  belief  in  an  ideal  purpose.  But  it  has 
also  given  humanity  the  disposal  of  an  accumula- 
tion of  material  wealth  sufficient  to  bestow  com- 


THE    NEW    SOCIALISM         283 

fort  and  the  possibility  of  happiness  on  all;  it 
has  created  machinery  by  which  the  human  effort 
necessary  to  maintain  and  augment  this  wealth 
can  be  indefinitely  reduced  so  as  to  leave  more 
time  for  the  pursuit  of  higher  purposes ;  it  has — 
by  building  railroads  and  steamships,  weaving  a 
network  of  telegraphic  and  telephonic  lines  about 
the  earth,  and  making  the  air  itself  a  means  of 
communication  between  countries  and  continents 
— turned  the  whole  world  into  one  great  commu- 
nity of  interests  and  desires.  Moreover,  whilst 
dragging  the  artisan  away  from  his  own  shop  and 
the  peasant  from  his  ancestral  field  in  order  to 
compel  them  to  sell  the  strength  of  their  bodies 
on  the  market,  it  has  unwittingly  smashed  the 
chains  of  slavery,  serfdom  and  guild-tyranny, 
and  made  men  potentially  free  and  equal  mem- 
bers of  the  political  commonwealth,  so  that  de- 
mocracy and  the  power  of  the  masses  to  control 
their  own  destiny  have  become  possible.  Capi- 
talism has,  in  a  word,  made  feasible  the  boundless 
expansion  of  forces  and  ideals  which  are  man- 
kind's weapons  in  the  war  "that  is  a  longer  and 
greater  one  than  any." 

The  new  socialism  should,  therefore,  be  more 
than  an  antithesis  to  capitalism.  It  should  be, 
and  I  think  it  will  be,  a  synthesis  making  the  in- 
centive of  competition  and  the  constant  increase 
of  human  productivity,  which  we  owe  to  capi- 


284     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

talism,  serve  the  ideals  of  freedom,  equality  of 
rights  and  chances,  and  universal  solidarity, 
which  we  owe  to  democracy.  Only  thus  can  the 
reconcihation  of  the  two  equally  vital,  but  still 
antagonistic,  principles  of  individual  liberty  and 
social  unity  be  effected. 

The  doctrine  of  this  sociahsm  will  not  waive  the 
benefit  which  the  theoricians  of  the  old  "Inter- 
nationale" derived  from  the  use  of  the  Marxian 
method  of  interpreting  history  in  the  light  of 
economic  facts.  But  here,  too,  it  will  have  to 
synthesise.  It  will  have  to  recognise  that  the 
economic  interpretation  of  history  shows  but  one 
of  the  strands  out  of  which  the  texture  of  human 
adventure  is  woven.  It  is  as  silly  to  reduce  (as 
most  dogmatic  Marxians  do)  the  influence  of 
individuahty,  human  ideals,  rehgion,  mass  psy- 
chology ;  of  the  progress  of  science,  art  and  liter- 
ature, and  so  forth,  to  a  mere  reflex  of  the  preva- 
lent mode  of  production  of  a  period,  as  it  would 
be  to  conceive  man  as  homo  economicus,  a  puppet 
animated  only  by  the  strings  of  the  economic  in- 
terests proper  to  its  social  class. 

The  war  has  shown  that  the  Marxian  theory 
of  the  class  struggle  needs  revision.  It  remains 
true  that  the  antagonism  of  economic  class  inter- 
ests is  an  essential  motive  of  the  conflicts  through 
which  progress  realises  itself.  But  there  is  also 
a  large,  a  much  larger  field  than  pre-war  social- 


THE    NEW    SOCIALISM         285 

ism  believed,  where  the  interests  of  all  classes  co- 
incide. To  this  common  interest  appeal  should 
be  made,  as  well  as  to  class  interest.  The  whole 
community  has  the  same  concern  that  hygienic 
conditions  should  be  such  as  to  prevent  the 
spreading  of  plagues ;  that  a  minimum  of  pubHc 
education  should  be  provided  for  all;  that  cities 
should  be  supplied  with  food,  fuel,  water,  fresh 
air,  and  light;  that  justice  and  police  should  keep 
the  law  estabHshed  by  the  popular  will;  that 
means  of  transport  and  communication  should 
exist ;  that  street  traffic  should  be  regulated,  fires 
and  floods  fought,  navigation  made  secure,  and  a 
thousand  other  things.  Do  not  these  bring  it 
about  that  even  the  poorest  labourer  finds  him- 
self bound  in  every  occurrence  of  his  daily  hfe 
by  at  least  as  many  ties  of  interest  to  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole  as  to  his  fellow-workers  with 
whom  he  is  united  by  class  sohdarity?  Is  there 
not  a  common  interest  of  humanity  that  the  world 
should  be  made  to  produce  as  much  wealth  as 
possible,  and  that  the  productivity  of  human 
labour  should  be  increased?  Is  it  in  the  interest 
of  the  proletariat  alone  that  the  wholesale  de- 
struction of  life  and  property  caused  by  war 
should  be  prevented;  or  does  not  this  object 
rather  unite  the  immense  majority  of  all  nations 
against  a  few  profiteers?  Finally,  do  we  not  see 
labour  itself,  when  compelled  to  threaten  a  cessa- 


286     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

tion  of  work  for  the  improvement  of  its  condi- 
tion, constantly  appealing  to  the  interest  of  the 
community  at  large  to  avoid  a  stoppage  of  pro- 
duction or  of  transport  and  to  bring  the  pressure 
of  public  opinion  to  bear  upon  stubborn  em- 
ployers? If  this  be  so,  then  the  theory  of  the 
labour  movement  must  be  put  in  accordance  with 
the  practice.  Thus,  the  doctrine  of  class  solidar- 
ity should  be  complemented  by  that  of  social 
solidarity,  and  the  appeal  to  the  common  interest 
of  all,  or  nearly  all,  be  made  the  dominant  motive 
of  a  movement  that,  being  essentially  democratic, 
aims  at  rallying  to  its  side  the  majority  of  the 
people. 

Even  the  mischievous  abuse  of  the  watchwords 
Law  and  Order,  to  justify  ruthless  oppression 
or  the  suppression  of  minorities,  need  not  pre- 
vent socialists  from  stating  openly  and  sincerely 
that  they  intend  to  reach  their  aims  not  by  the 
use  of  violence,  but  by  the  legal  and  orderly  con- 
quest of  the  will  of  the  maj  ority.  It  is  of  the  very 
essence  of  democracy  that  rebellion  is  a  sacred 
right,  nay  a  duty,  should  a  minority  try  to  impose 
itself  upon  the  majority  by  misusing  the  power 
which  it  derives  from  social  privileges  or  from 
its  superior  material  strength.  The  same  applies 
to  a  minority,  if  the  majority  break  the  consti- 
tution in  order  to  deprive  it  of  the  use  of  the  legal 
means  which  may  enable  it  in  turn  to  become  a 


THE    NEW    SOCIALISM         287 

majority.  But  apart  from  these  cases,  it  is  in 
the  pubhe  interest  that  the  law  which  expresses 
the  popular  will  should  be  respected,  and  all  dis- 
turbances, which  may  result  in  loss  of  wealth  or 
life,  avoided. 

Russia  shows  that  the  problem  confronting 
labour  is  not  only  how  to  get  control  of  the  in- 
strument of  production  and  public  administra- 
tion, but  also  to  see  to  it  that  this  instrument  is 
adequate  in  itself  and  that  the  very  method  by 
which  it  is  seized  does  not  put  it  out  of  use.  Brit- 
ish Fabianism,  which  I  confess  to  have  treated 
(like  most  other  pre-war  socialists  on  the  Euro- 
pean continent)  with  undeserved  contempt  as  a 
hobby  of  the  dilettanti  of  officialdom,  hereby 
proves  that  it  was  in  the  right  in  studying  prob- 
lems of  administration  at  a  time  when  the  likeli- 
hood that  these  problems  would  affect  the  labour 
movement  seemed  very  remote.  Something  more 
than  study  of,  the  problem  is,  however,  required, 
namely,  the  recognition  of  the  fact  that  both  the 
political  and  the  industrial  policy  of  labour  must 
be  so  directed  as  to  insure  the  improvement  of 
the  technical  means  of  production  and  adminis- 
tration at  the  same  time  as  their  control  gradu- 
ally passes  into  its  hands. 

The  expectation  that  the  New  Socialism  will 
be  pragmatic  and  practical,  even  as  pre-war 
socialism  was  dogmatic  and  sectarian,  is  mainly 


288     THE  REMAKING  OF  A  MIND 

justified  by  the  shifting  of  the  new  "Internation-» 
ale's"  centre  of  gravity  from  the  Russian  and 
German  East  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  West.  In  the 
East,  the  predominant  form  of  pre-war  socialism 
was  political  and  theoretical;  in  the  West,  it  has 
always  rested  on  the  solid  foundation  of  the 
trade  union  movement.  Trade  unionism,  with 
its  daily  pursuit  of  immediate  improvements  and 
its  widespread  creation  of  effective  responsibil- 
ity, develops  a  much  more  reaUstic  spirit  than  did 
the  more  academic  and  less  responsible  doctrinal 
or  electoral  propaganda  which  was  the  main 
manifestation  of  German  and  Russian  socialism. 
The  meetings  of  the  old  "Internationale"  usu- 
ally showed  a  disagreeable  predominance  of  the 
professional  politician  and  of  the  crank;  the  new 
"Internationale"  of  democratic  socialism  prom- 
ises to  be  democratic  in  this  also,  that  it  will  be 
more  representative  of  the  fundamental  aspira- 
tions of  the  masses  than  of  the  ambitions  of  self- 
styled  leaders. 

It  will  be  worth  what  the  masses  themselves 
are  worth.  Will  they  save  Europe  from  the 
decay  that  threatens  her,  and  once  again  fashion 
a  new  civilisation  upon  her  ancient  hallowed  soil? 
I  do  not  know.  But  this  I  know,  that  if  labour 
does  not  save  her  nothing  will.  Labour  is  the 
only  element  that  can  give  her  the  unity  she 
needs, 


THE    NEW    SOCIALISM         289 

I  have  purposely  restricted  my  remarks  about 
post-war  socialism  to  a  broad  sketch.  I  am  not 
a  builder  of  formulae.  I  have  lost  my  faith  in 
them.  They  are  good  only  to  be  knocked  over 
by  facts.  I  wanted  to  depict  a  state  of  mind 
rather  than  to  draft  a  programme.  It  seems 
less  important  to  me  that  we  should  get  hypno- 
tised by  the  dogmse  of  partisan  politics  than  that 
we  should  evolve,  with  those  who  have  to  play 
a  part  in  the  remaking  of  the  old  world,  the  new 
state  of  mind  that  is  needed  to  help  humanity 
recover  the  control  of  its  destinies. 


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Mfi'f 


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vr 


JUK    4    1945 


tlQV    81986 


p^UTO.  P'-^ 


^i98& 


OCT 


OOP 


» .  >  ^  *^  p  ->  Lj 


RgC'D  LP 


MAY  3  0  mZ 


NOV  1  V  1985 


LD  21-95to-7,'37 


GENERAL  LIBRARY -U.C.  BERKELEY 


III 

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